


One Bad Day

by a_platypus



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Albeit begrudgingly, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Buried Alive, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Frank cares, Hurt Matt Murdock, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Matt can take a lot of punishment, Moral Dilemmas, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Rescue, Season/Series 03, Sensory Deprivation, Slow Build, Slow Burn, temporary deafness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2020-09-30 11:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 19
Words: 66,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20446781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_platypus/pseuds/a_platypus
Summary: Frank is on patrol when he comes across Red beating some poor blindfolded guy to death. Daredevil's many things, but a homicidal maniac is not one of them.That spot's already been taken.(a.k.a. when Daredevil is beaten by Dex in his own suit and subsequently buried alive as per Fisk's commands, the Punisher may be the only one able to save him)





	1. Chapter 1

Frank surveyed the rooftops of Hell’s Kitchen as he listened to the tinny feedback of the police scanner. Tactically, the water tower left him more open than he’d liked, but the risk was worth the breadth of view it granted as a sniper’s nest.

Unfortunately, the perch also left him fully exposed to New York’s shitty weather.

A shock of cold slapped him across the face as the frigid breeze picked up, the biting chill seeping through the fabric of his clothes. Frank rose his hands to his mouth, breathed warmth into his stiff fingers, and rubbed his hands together in an attempt to thaw out the cold.

The night had been slow; the winter conditions driving the rats back into their sewers.

Disappointing. He had been hoping for some action.

In need of something to alleviate his restlessness, Frank swung his legs over the side of the water tower and reached into his duffel bag. He rifled around in the dark – around spare firearms, an army knife, and what felt like a grenade (didn’t remember throwing in that particular item, but you could never be too prepared), before he found his hip-flask stashed toward the bottom of the pack.

He was halfway through pouring himself some coffee when movement from a few roofs over caught his attention.

Frank stopped.

The most he could make out from his position was a flurry of motion; a violent clash of red and black.

His eyes flicked to the sky and he released a sigh, taking a moment to watch as it turned to fog.

Im-fucking-peccable timing.

He took a scalding mouthful of coffee before chucking the rest over the side of the building, then pulled out his rifle and took a closer look through the scope.

The red shape took form of full-bodied Kevlar, red lenses, ridiculous little horns poking out of the top of the cowl helmet.

“Red?”

His voice garnered zero reaction from the Devil. Frank’s frown deepened. The asshole had his blood up – his keen senses focused solely on his opponent in black.

There was something about the way he fought. Frank had the slopes and juts of Red’s figure memorised; his height, his stance, his movements.

What he saw here - it wasn’t the image he had carefully compartmentalised away for later use.

This was messy - albeit controlled - brutality. He reigned down a beating on the other man; his punches swift enough to not be blocked, but their frequency too slow to send the man to a downed state. The other guy was already beaten; limping, bleeding, strongly favouring the left side of his body.

Frank could pick out his weaknesses from more than a couple hundred metres away. Yet each assault on him was directed toward a new, unmarred location of his body.

Red was playing with him.

Frank set the rifle down a moment.

Frank was perfectly aware of the steaming slice of bullshit pie the media had been serving out recently. From the Devil’s supposed death to his bloodthirsty resurrection. The trail of dead innocents Red had left in his wake.

He wasn’t taking one bite of it.

If he’d learned anything from their encounters, it was that the infuriating little shit had a code. He didn’t believe in a justice that included killing. Nah, altar boy respected the law – respected his faith – too much for that, no matter how contrarian or hypocritical it seemed. He was more likely to be the one protecting shitbags than hurting them.

Daredevil was many things, but a homicidal maniac was not one of them. That spot had already been taken.

Then again, perhaps having a skyscraper dropped on top of you could change a thing or two.

He should just leave him. If Red really was on a vendetta to throw away everything he’d previously stood for, Frank should stay out his way. Count it as a win.

Frank let out a low growl and pulled his hand away; rubbed the itch at the back of his head.

Even if the kid wasn’t in the right frame of mind, he’d work it out eventually. Probably just mope about it for a couple of months.

This was the furthest thing from Frank’s responsibility. He wasn’t the Devil’s keeper.

_Fuck._

This was going to happen whether he poked his head into it or not. He didn’t need another lecture from Red.

“Fuck,” He hissed, aloud.

He picked the rifle back up and settled into position.

“The fuck are you doing?” He murmured under his breath as he lined up his shot.

Red’s appearance had been hard to ignore, but now as he examined the scene, Frank realised that the man dressed in black had a blindfold covering the top half of his face. He didn’t have a lot of time to process this, unfortunately, as Red finally became tired of beating the dead horse and shifted to finish it. His hands wrapping around the man’s throat.

“You’re gonna kill him, kid.” He called out.

He received no retort, no gesture or signal that he had heard Frank.

And he had heard him. Frank was sure of it. Had seen the freak of nature respond to a whisper from over three blocks away.

Which meant that he was here – trying to help Red maintain his fucking holier-than-thou, moral high ground, and the prick wouldn’t even give him the time of day to acknowledge his presence.

The man in black thrashed in his hold, though his flailing grew weaker and weaker with each passing second.

“Come on, this ain’t you, Red,” Frank gritted through his teeth, “You don’t want to step over that line.”

Red followed the man downwards as his knees buckled and he slumped to the ground, his hands still firmly around his neck, squeezing the life from his lungs.

“Alright asshole, ignore this,” Frank murmured, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet landed a safe foot away from Red, but the shot itself gave him one hell of a shock.

He watched, amused, as the kid jolted upwards then rolled to his left, dragging the limp man in front of him as a barrier.

The reaction struck Frank as off. Choir boy didn’t really do hostages. Granted, he also wasn’t known for strangling people to death. But Red should’ve known that if Frank had wanted a bullet in him, he wouldn’t have missed.

He watched as Red fumbled frantically for something on the ground before he threw it high into the air.

Huh.

Frank added ‘throwing random objects off the roof’ to his growing list of Red’s odd behaviours as he dragged the limp, motionless man toward the fire escape. Frank wondered idly whether he was still breathing.

Red was a few inches away from the door by the time he finally deigned to meet his gaze across the rooftops.

He threw up his arm and waved, an unsettling smile stretching across his face.

It’s at that moment that a hard object struck him. Frank faintly heard something clatter to the ground beside him as he winced and lost grip of the rifle. He raised a hand to the sharp pain that erupted from his forehead, his fingertips coming away red as a heavy trickle of blood began to flow from the wound.

Frank growled and realigned the gun.

He was too late. The roof was clear. They were gone.

Frank’s brow furrowed. He blinked away the blood dripping into his eyes as he examined the dark ground for the object that had hit him.

There, out of a place on the tin roof of the water tower, sat a thick, broken piece of gravel.

_What the fuck?_


	2. Chapter 2

Matt wasn’t in the greatest condition.

Poindexter’s rough treatment wasn’t helping. His movement jarring and unforgiving, sharp shoulder jabbing into Matt’s battered being as he was carried through the dark hallways of an abandoned workplace. Matt’s breath rattled, fresh agony stabbing into his ribs with each step.

Poindexter was calm - focused. His heartbeat even and his breathing steady despite the extra weight on his back.

He hadn’t yet noticed their pursuer.

It wasn’t hard to pick out. Frank’s presence had always been… distracting, to say the least. There were a few dead giveaways to his presence. The military hardware strapped to his person. The scent of gunpowder and blood. A heavy soldier’s tread pounding into the ground.

Matt had heard him across the rooftop. His last clutches at hope interwoven into the sound of Frank’s pursuit.

Frank stopped at the edge of the building. Matt could feel the coolness of the glass windows to his and Poindexter’s left.

There was a coolness to Matt’s left that he assumed were wide panels of glass. His suspicions were confirmed when Frank stopped at the edge of the neighbouring building, his heart picking up.

He’d caught up to Poindexter, but it was too late. It was over. The buildings were too far from each other for Frank to be able to jump from rooftop to rooftop. And by the time Frank reached the streets, they’d be long gone.

He could shoot at Poindexter, sure. Had an open view of the two of them across the void if his heartbeat was any indication.

But between Poindexter wearing his suit, the direction they were walking and the way he was being carried, it was more likely that Matt would be shot than Poindexter. And if the little scenario on the roof told him anything, it was that Matt wasn’t Frank’s target right now. That honour, for whatever reason, went to Daredevil.

Matt frowned, tilting his head.

Frank hadn’t given up just yet.

His footsteps led a path towards the exit, but his heart hadn’t slowed. If anything, its rhythm had risen in tempo, as if the man was gearing up for a fight.

He sucked in a breath of air as Frank’s boots pivoted; facing them again.

Christ. Surely, he wouldn’t.

He heard the tell-tale click of a gun’s safety being switched off.

Matt took a breath. He would.

He tried to speak, but the only noise that came out of him was a terrible rasp that burned his throat.

Poindexter readjusted his hold. Matt released a pained groan when the shift dug into his injured ribs.

“What was that?”

Matt could hear the bastard’s smug smirk in the question.

He wet his lips and tried again, the words no more than a frail whisper.

“You… might want to put me down.”

Poindexter actually laughed at that.

“And why would I do that?”

Matt sensed the instant the shots went off; two rounds shattering through the window.

Frank was either incredibly skilled in the act of falling, or incredibly lucky. Either way, the air displacement made by the high velocity bullets were replaced by a slower, larger shift as Frank, the absolute madman, leapt from his building.

A cascade of glass rained down over them as he smashed through the weakened windowpane.

Poindexter unceremoniously dropped Matt in a heap to the floor, and his whole world whited out from the impact. For a moment the only thing he could focus on was the waves of agony pulsating through his body.

By the time some semblance of awareness had returned, Castle and Poindexter were already locked in combat.

Matt’s ears rung as two shots went off, though there was no sign that the bullets hit soft tissue. He tried honing his muddled senses on the fight, but all he could make out were the sound of fists meeting flesh and the thick smell of sweat mingled with blood and adrenalin.

The gun fired again, before it clattered to the ground and slid past his feet. Matt clenched his jaw, held onto his ribcage, then kicked the firearm out the broken window, holding back a hiss when the movement sent a shock of pain through his body.

Disarmed, Frank still quickly managed to gain the upper hand.

He was stronger than Poindexter. Not to mention a better hand-to-hand brawler, but Matt attributed Frank’s speedy victory mostly to the fact that he’d already worn the prick down. The hallway was also sparse and empty, nothing in their vicinity for Poindexter to throw.

Frank slammed Poindexter into the wall, “Who are you?”

Matt blinked.

Frank knew. Somehow, someway he knew.

The way Frank had been trying to reason with him earlier had him wondering if the uncharacteristic behaviour would tip him off.

Everything he’d done was all perfectly possible. That was what was so brilliant about Fisk’s plan. His capability for change was something Frank had foretold himself.

_You’re one bad day away from being me._

Maybe Frank just had an uncanny knack for seeing through other people’s bullshit.

Or maybe it was the fact that he could just _see_, period. Matt had thought the suit had been captured in perfect likeness. Though, he didn’t know what Poindexter looked like, and it was possible that there were differences in their facial shape or build that he’d been able to pick out.

Poindexter smiled through bloodied teeth, “I’m Daredevil.”

A muscle in Frank’s cheek twitched.

“So, this a copycat situation? You takin’ up the mantle?”

There was a pause, before, “You kill him?”

Frank’s heart did a weird fluttery thing that Matt chose not to delve into too deeply.

Poindexter laughed, paused to spit blood onto his shoes.

“No. Fisk won’t let him off that easy.”

“What’s that shitbag got to do with this?”

“What do you care, Castle? You should be thanking him-“

Frank scoffed.

“Don’t have to worry about the devil looking over your shoulder anymore. The whole of Hell’s Kitchen is your own personal hunting ground now.”

“Where is he?” Frank demanded, blowing right through that can of worms.

“Can’t help you there. I can’t imagine anything Fisk has in mind will be pleasant-”

A shiver travelled down Matt’s spine, and he struggled vainly to push himself from the ground.

“But I don’t ask questions; I just deliver the goods.”

If Frank hadn’t put two-and-two together yet, surely he’d recognise his voice. Matt opened his mouth the only noise that came out of his abused throat was a hoarse, strangled sound that was more embarrassing than Matt cared to admit.

Frank’s head swivelled toward Matt at that, and there were a few moments of dead silence as the two fell silent.

Matt winced. He could sense Frank’s eyes raking over his prone figure again, taking it in a new context; could almost hear the gears clicking over in Frank’s head as he worked it all out.

Poindexter struggled against Frank’s hold. Matt felt the entire wall shuddered as Frank pulled Dex forward then smashed him into it again.

Matt could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear. It radiated off Frank in waves as he and Dex remained in a standoff.

Except it wasn’t fear, Matt realized distantly, heart clenching viciously at the thought. It was anger. Real and overwhelming.

Matt wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He hadn’t expected sympathy from Frank. Vengeance maybe. But not for him.

God. He was going to murder Poindexter. And Matt didn’t have the strength to stop him.

It wasn’t until he heard the sound of a small steel canister rolling against the floor that Matt realised that they weren’t alone. A multitude of fast heartbeats pounding from the stairwell.

In the half second delay before the grenade went off, Poindexter sucked in a breath and held it.

A thick smoke filled the room. Matt did what he could to cover his nose and mouth, but he could already taste the chemicals on his tongue. Could feel the worst of his pain fade to a pleasant, dull throb.

Frank stumbled backwards, his head jerking towards the stairwell when the door busted open and a team of armed agents flooded into the hallway.

Matt recognised the gas. Methoxyflurane. A type of morphine. Powerful enough to send a raging bull to sleep.

He could feel his senses cloud as his consciousness slipped away. His hearing fading to a faint buzz with each breath he took.

The last thing Matt remembered before everything went blank was gunfire, followed closely by Frank’s guttural roar as he charged toward a terrified agent, tackled him at the waist, then hauled him out the open window, the both of them descending down the open void below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not great but I'm getting this shit out baby
> 
> Stick with it I'll promise it'll get better


	3. Chapter 3

Matt’s cognizance for the first few hours after he’d woken was a series of brief flickers between bouts of pain and the dizzy mist of laudanum. Every breath burned an excruciating pain through his chest that was worsened by any movement, no matter how minute. Staying still wasn’t much better; his mind unable to focus on much other than the chronic agony pulsating from his ribcage.

It took long, arduous hours before he was able to assemble his disarrayed brain into some semblance of order, and even then, he didn’t so much gain consciousness as he succumbed to a mounting sense of horror.

When Matt reached out to feel for what was in front of him, he was met with a soft, synthetic material that smelt faintly of plastic. Matt could sense the dense metal layered beneath it, and soon realised that he was tightly encased within the material. He held onto his cracked ribs and pushed against the sides with as much strength as he could physically muster, but the box didn’t budge.

He strained for something more to piece together his situation, but it was as if he were trying to hear through noise-cancelling ear plugs. All that came through to him was the pound of his heart and the harsh rasp of his own breaths. Matt felt around the seams of the box, searching for a handle or lock. His fingertips came in contact to a latex-based, rubber-like material. A sealant?

Matt’s breaths hitched for a moment, and a stifling fear filled him with the realisation.

Not a box. This was a coffin.

A _soundproof_ coffin.

Not only that, but they had buried him so deep into the earth that he couldn’t feel the residual hum of the subway. The only thing he could feel or taste being the cold hardness of the material imprisoning him and the copper of his bleeding wounds.

Matt’s first instinctual reaction to realising that he was likely going to die in the confined space was to mindlessly kick and punch at his prison. Which not only wasted his limited air as he gulped down short, panicked breaths, but only managed to over-exert his muscles and amplify the agony pulsating from his side. He got a grip of himself once his mind seemed to catch onto the fact that his thoughtless flailing wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

Matt couldn’t remember a time in his life that his heart and mind wasn’t filled with the sensations of home. He had always been deeply connected to New York. Always. Whether he wanted to be or not - when he thought the ceaseless, deafening commotion of Hell’s Kitchen would drive him insane, when the dizzyingly powerful smell of the city burned the hairs of his nose and weakened his knees, when he couldn’t wash away the feeling of sweat and grime because people had absolutely _zero _sense of personal space.

Foggy had thought it invasive, prying into other’s lives when he was not welcome. He was probably right. But how could he not, when everything was so, ineffably _loud._

He’d never been able to completely block it out. Even when he’d first lost his vision, the familiar sounds of the city had comforted him. Even through his spells of deafness in his apartment or the Church, he could ground himself to the vibrations of his building, was drawn to the array of scents around him – both good and bad – that assured him he was at home. Deaf and blind, he’d be able to navigate his way around through touch alone; the city awake and thrumming, providing enough shifting air currents, vibrations, and heat variations for Matt to know exactly where he was.

Stick had helped him develop shields, of course, so he could be more selective with what he did and did not want to hear, but he’d never known true silence. He’d had his fingers on the pulse of New York from the moment he was born, which was why it was altogether entirely disconcerting and terrifying when he was entirely disconnected from the outside world.

Matt could almost laugh at the amount of effort Fisk had gone to, handcrafting the perfect hell as his final resting place. It was ingenious really. What better torture than sensory deprivation was there for someone like Matt?

Fisk, more than anyone, knew that physical pain was a pale comparison to the true torture of endless confinement with nothing but his thoughts. Except this time, there were no last words. No final battle. No catharsis.

Matt lay awake and tried his best to stave off an oncoming panic attack by meditating. Sucked in short, shallow breaths in an effort to extend his time and failed to ignore the fact that each lungful replaced his precious store of oxygen with carbon dioxide.

Keeping track of time was near impossible. He could try and measure the length of time by how claustrophobic he became, but to that extent he could’ve spent an eternity six feet under. There were no micro-changes in air density in there, no vibrations or blankets of temperature variation. Just hot, clammy breaths of stale air as he faded deeper and deeper into the fire. His own high fever heated the small, enclosed space, the temperature becoming so intense and smothering that he thought he might be cooked by his own body heat.

It wasn’t long before Matt, slick with sweat and severely dehydrated, began to spiral.

He was trapped. Buried alive. Caged with nothing but the increasingly loud pump of his own heart, the bones of his ribcage grinding against each other, the rush of his bloodstream, the buzzing of his nervous system and a detached, motionless, pure white static in his head.

Matt knew what was coming. Asphyxiation. Every breath he took led to his impending doom. At some point, all the carbon dioxide he was breathing out would fill the space, and slowly put him to sleep.

God. It was exactly as Fisk had promised. He was going to lay here, alone, dying slowly, knowing that Poindexter was going after those he cared about, helpless to save them.

It was that final thought that broke through his haze of panic.

Fisk could set his dog on him. Break his body, destroy his reputation, burn down the very symbol he’d forged.

In fact, in any other scenario, Fisk would be raising the winner’s belt, having thoroughly beaten and broken the Devil. With the added satisfaction of knowing that despite all his opponent’s best efforts, he had lost.

But there was one thing the fat prick hadn’t taken into consideration.

He’d involved Foggy and Karen. And Matt would not – _could not_, lay there and die knowing they were in danger.

He waited patiently for his heart to slow from its break-neck pace, then pressed a palm against the top of the coffin – searching for where the integrity of the structure felt weakest.

_We always get back up, right, Dad?_

Matt breathed in; filled his lungs with what air he had left.

_Come on, Matty. Get to work._

A fresh wave of agony flared across his ribcage as he smashed his fist into the coffin.

Matt cried out when he felt bone begin to pierce into the soft tissue of his lung.

He couldn’t stop. Not now. Not when with every crack of his knuckles more of the world was let through.

He hit the spot again – the sound of worms writhing through the dirt; and again - the muffled sounds of the city above permeated through the thick layers of sediment; and again – the scent of death, bodies rotting, surrounded by decay.

Matt roared, his throat dry and raw. Threw in everything he had left.

There was a cracking noise as the material splintered and gave away, then he was drowning.

Drowning in wet soil that weighed down on him like a ton of bricks. It filled every crevice – got into his eyes, his ears, his mouth – cutting off his air flow and settling so heavily that he thought his chest might be crushed.

With the soundproof barrier broken, the whole outside world flooded in - bombarded his senses as Matt was hit with a wall of sound and smell. The heavy odor of damp earth, horns honking, trucks screeching to halt, cigarette smoke, helicopters whapping low overhead, old amalgamated scents of vintage clothing and sulfur, a Puerto Rican couple arguing heatedly in Spanish, the high-pitched shrieking of a car-alarm, a sharp uric acid that Matt had long ago associated with piss, screaming, wafts of ethnic food stalls, heels clicking along the pavement, dogs barking, police sirens, a homeless man that hadn’t showered in weeks, steam rising from the sewers, muffled sobs, jackhammers eating into concrete. It was altogether too fast, too much, too soon for him to keep up with, and Matt had no defences left. No way to sort through it or block it out.

Screaming would be counterproductive to digging his way out of his own grave. So, he let it in. Let everything assault his senses and overflow through his brain as he breathed through the dirt and the rot and the pain.

Matt ate into final reserves of his energy as he shifted against the damp earth pinning him to the ground; squeezed through the opening of cracked metal and vinyl and clawed his way upward, nails ripping from his fingers as he hit solid rock and roots.

_Come on Matty…_

His lungs burned. He was up against the ropes, his body beating him with every painstakingly slow inch of progress through the cold, hard earth.

Matt fought back. Clung desperately to consciousness. But he could feel himself slipping away. He wanted to scream, to sob. Not now. Not when he was so, tantalizing close to the surface.

By the time he sensed the cool night’s breeze against his bloodied fingertips, it seemed nothing more than a dream.


	4. Chapter 4

Frank woke up to a headache that felt like a jackhammer being drilled into his brain, his vision blurred around the edges. His limbs failing to cooperate with his brain; body sluggish and unresponsive.

The good and bad news was that he had survived the fall by landing in a dumpster. Or by landing on the piece of shit he’d taken for a ride out the window. One of the two.

The smell hit him first. A decaying, putrescible aroma that got stuck in his nose and stayed there, too strong for Frank to identify any one particular thing. Plastic and glass bottles dug into his back as he shifted upwards. He groaned, the movement notifying him of the array of new bruises from the impact, ruptured capillaries beneath his skin. Frank cracked open his eyes, winced when sunlight streamed in, burned into the back of his head.

_Red. _

Frank knew who he was. Had known for a long time. He’d had his suspicions at the hospital. Frank had a good ear for voices. Red’s had been so damn familiar, but he hadn’t known where to place it. It wasn’t until he was standing in front of Frank, addressing him in that same, almost condescending tone as he had on the rooftop. Remembered it all slotting into place during Red’s speech. Couldn’t help but smirk. Almost felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner. It was funny, really. Red didn’t even have to try. Even when he showed up late to his trials beaten half to hell. Who would ever connect the blind, catholic lawyer with a cane that could hardly navigate his office with the insane masked vigilante who flipped, fought, and moved unlike anything they’d ever seen?

Frank would, apparently. It was obvious, once he could see it – Red’s insistence on protecting shitbags like Grotto. Seeing the good in people that would sooner shit on his grave. If Frank hadn’t already been tipped off by his uncharacteristic behaviour on the rooftop, he had put it together the instant he had eyes on the kid, up close and personal, where he could discern the cupid bow of his lips and the shape of his jawline below the black mask; so different from the defined angles of the man he had up against the wall. The man wearing the Devil’s skin a pale, sick imitation of Red himself.

The sight had caused his blood to boil.

Fundamentally, he had a lot of respect for Red and what he did. They were two soldiers on the same side of the war. It was just a shame that the devil was too naïve to finish the job properly. Their opposing ideologies had them at a stalemate. Red couldn’t stop Frank because he desperately, foolishly grasped at hopes that he was redeemable. And Frank couldn’t kill Red because despite how impossibly infuriating his beliefs, he was innocent. And somehow, somewhere along the line, this dynamic had transformed from a frustrating inability to stop each other into a reluctant obligation to save one another.

And now it was up to Frank to choose between leaving the kid to die at the hands of the scummiest crime lord in the city or going after him.

Which wasn’t really a choice at all.

Frank leaned over and rifled through the dead agent’s pockets. He pulled out a phone from the man’s dress pants then took a seat on top of his chest, pressing his back against the hard metal of the dumpster. The screen was a web of cracks, but fortunately for Frank, it was still functional. He punched in the numbers off the top of his head, waited as the phone dialled through.

“Hello?”

“Lieberman.”

“Yes? This is David… Who’s this?”

Frank could detect the slight tremor in his voice. Couldn’t tell if it was because of nerves, or if it was just that David was just this side of socially awkward. Probably both. With the amount of shit that the guy had been through this past year, Frank could hardly blame him for being jumpy.

“I need a favour.” Frank ground out.

There was a pregnant pause before, “Frank? What the hell are you – is there something going on?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. I just need you to check some security cameras in a garage on 48th and 11th. I can send you the location.”

Lieberman responded with a laugh that was more hysteria than humour, “I don’t hear from you in months and this is the first thing you ask? You realise what you’re asking isn’t exactly legal?”

”Yeah, blow me your honor.” Frank responded, fully aware of Micro’s recent snooping. Even with everything that had happened, he still chose to poke his nose where it didn’t belong.

“Can you do it?”

The other side of the line went silent.

“I need to know if any cars left between 11pm and 3am last night,” He said, then added a little more softly, “It’s important, David. I wouldn’t be askin’ if it wasn’t.”

At that, David gave in with a frustrated sigh, “Fine. Asshole. Send me the info and I’ll see what I can do.” Then hung up on him.

Frank stared at the blank screen for a couple of seconds. It wasn’t fair for him to drag Lieberman back into his life again. But he didn’t know who else to turn to. And he wasn’t about to let Red slip through his fingers. He sent through his coordinates, checked the time (late afternoon – _fuck_, he’d been out for far longer than he’d thought) then shoved the phone into his pocket and vaulted over the dumpster, a painful shock shooting up his spine as he landed heavily on his feet. Should probably lay off plummeting from buildings for a while.

He’d been incredibly lucky to land in the dump, and not the expanse of hard concrete that took up the other ninety-nine percent of the alleyway. He grumbled, cracked the tight kink in his neck, then made his way toward the street. Frank was a man on a mission. And he had a pretty strong feeling he was going to need his shit.

\---------------

The duffel bag Frank had left at the top of the water tower before he went on a frantic rooftop chase was still there. By the time Frank retrieved it, David had sent him images of a van’s plates. He resisted the urge to throw the phone when he realised that there was no final destination attached, only a list of sites the vehicle had passed.

It took him well into the night to ghost the van’s route. Through Harlem, past Riverdale, across Yonkers, before he was well out of the city and on a direct path toward Tarrytown. Each hour spent searching for any tell-tale clue of Red or his captors reminding Frank that his chances of finding the kid alive were in an exponential decline. He found very little evidence of activity; the correlation between distance and timestamp attached to the security footage led to the general conclusion that the car couldn’t have stopped anywhere throughout the journey.

It wasn’t until he was further from the city – north along the Hudson, away from the dense hotspot of surveillance - that he felt he was on the right track. And it was hours before he finally found it.

Frank had almost missed the damn thing. Dismissed it as any other number of deserted vehicles he’d passed, parked on the side of the road, hidden beneath overhanging tree branches, abandoned, stripped of number plates.

But even with his body battered from the fall and mind exhausted from long hours of tracking, Frank could identify the van’s make. Its model. The colour.

He dropped his bag, pulled out a handgun and shoved it into the back of his jeans. The vehicle had been left in a ditch between the road and a tall spiked, black fence line. He gave a passing glance to the property, taking note of the long rows of headstones. A cemetery, not unlike the one where Frank had spilled out his heart to Red, too tired and in too much pain to care.

Frank broke the van’s window; making quick work of letting himself in and ripping out the battery cables when the high pitch shrill of the alarm sounded. A cold flush rushed over him when his search was largely fruitless. The van’s interior clean.

Running out of time. Running short of clues.

When he checked out the back a shock of dread creeped over him like an icy chill, numbing his brain of thought. Dark blood stained the carpet. Relatively fresh. Red had been here. But that wasn’t what sent his heart plummeting to his stomach.

Sat innocently next to the bloodstain were dirtied shovels, still wet from the damp of the soil. Beside it, the boot had a rectangular, linear scrape running the length of the floor, like something heavy and metal had been removed from the back.

Frank’s head turned slowly toward the graveyard, dread filling him. Frank clenched his jaw silently, his hands curling into tightly clenched fists; nails digging into the skin of his palms.

_One batch_.

Find Red. He wondered briefly if they’d bother to shoot him before they buried him.

_Two batch._

Find who did this.

_Penny and dime._

Kill the fucking bastards.

His mind narrowed down to the fundamental tasks, repeated the rhyme over and over in his head. He grabbed the shovel, then slammed the van door shut. Let the murderous flood of rage flow over him as he made his way into the graveyard. Let it carry his otherwise exhausted body through rows and rows of headstones as he searched for a newly filled hole.

At first, Frank had thought he’d imagined it - some trick of the moonlight fooling his vision. But as he approached the patch of dirt marked by a flowerless, blank tombstone, he saw it. Fingertips poked out from the dark soil, a disturbing imitation of a lifeless form rising from the grave.

Frank’s body surged into action. He threw away the shovel. Hadn’t wanted to further injure the kid by hitting him with the blunt end of the metal. He chose instead to do his best to dig around the kid; moving at a frantic pace as he scooped armful after armful of cold, damp earth.

Frank was reminded of the archaeological documentaries Sarah used to love for some inexplicable reason that Frank himself could never relate to. Something about stumbling upon fossils in the middle of nowhere from a history unknown seemed tragically romantic to her – the slow and careful process of uncovering something precious. Something long-dead.

Frank rid the images from his mind. Now was not the time.

He uncovered Red’s arms, before he reached his head; still masked in black. Frank paused from his burrowing for a moment to check for Red’s breathing – a wave of bone-deep relief crashing over him when he felt the warm, weak exhale of breath against his hand. He returned to his digging with a renewed fervour, something that felt suspiciously like hope panging at his chest.

By the time he was able to pull Red above ground, they were both frozen, sodden, covered in dirt.

There was a trickle of dark blood oozing from under Red’s mask. He gently pried the fabric away.

The kid’s skin was a shade of sickly porcelain white; his face ashen and lips tinged blue. When Frank went to check for a heartbeat the kid’s skin was so cold that he wondered if there was a point to looking for a pulse at all – that maybe Red had stopped breathing between Frank checking for signs that he was alive and pulling him out of the grave.

“Don’t you give out on me now, Red.” He growled, voice tense and teeth clenched.

He dug his fingers deep into the artery at his neck, and the tension within his body relaxed. He felt it. Red’s heartbeat was weak and flighty, but, as always, the stubborn asshole wasn’t going down without one hell of a fight.

Nonetheless, he doubted Red would be moving any time soon. Which is exactly why Frank felt justified when he had a near heart-attack as the kid jolted upwards.

He rolled away from Frank and his stomach heaved as he turned out bile, blood, and dirt in equal measure.

“_Jesus Christ_.” Frank breathed, hardly believing what he was seeing.

Red was a mess. Not even his black suit could hide the bloodstains mingled into the dirt of his clothes. His body vibrated from the cold, so racked with pain and hunger and sickness that he could barely keep his eyes open.

He went to support the kid; save him from the indignity of falling face-first into own vomit. But he’d hardly grazed him when Red flailed – started throwing pitifully weak, clumsy punches. Frantic, animalistic sounds torn from his throat.

“Red – it’s me,” He said, tone low and placating, “It’s Frank.”

But his words didn’t seem to reach Red’s ears.

Frank swore. Red was half out of his mind with agony and fear. He squirmed in Frank’s grasp, panting in little, short, open-mouthed breaths as his head swung agitatedly from left to right, like he was having trouble discerning between any distinct sound or smell.

Frank finally realised that it was likely over-stimulation. Red’s heightened senses set off by Frank’s proximity.

That posed a pretty immediate problem. He couldn’t exactly give the kid space. Red was more likely to cause harm to himself with his flailing or freeze to death than return to a sedated state. So instead, he caught his wrists mid-swing and pulled him close. Cradled his head into the crook of his shoulder, pressed his hands over Red’s ears and directed Red’s near-frostbitten ones beneath Frank’s thick winter clothes and over his heart, hoping that he could calm the beat to a pace that Red would be able to follow.

At first, he flinched away from the closeness as if it burned his body. But after a minute or two, Red’s breathing seemed to even out, and his movements stilled to a point that Frank could only assume he’d fallen unconscious again. Frank didn’t dare shift, afraid that it would break the sudden peace that had settled between them. 

“Okay, Red.” He murmured, “Let’s get you outta here.”


	5. Chapter 5

Frank hadn’t liked the idea of transporting Red in the same vehicle he’d been kidnapped in. He very much doubted the kid would appreciate the notion either, but he was relatively short on options and by the looks of it, Red was short on time.

He placed Red carefully into the backseat of the van, then pulled away the console at the front and hot-wired the engine. The satisfaction of bringing the vehicle back to life was dampened when Frank – grip hard against the steering wheel and foot hovering uncertainly over the gas – realised that he didn’t have any destination in mind.

He couldn’t exactly take Red to a hospital. Fisk’s men would be keeping an eye out for any record of Red’s name. That, of course, was assuming that Fisk knew who Red was. Which was a risk that Frank currently wasn’t prepared to leave to chance.

There was also the fact that he’d rather not have to explain away how a supposedly deceased, blind lawyer, recently dug up from the grave had been suddenly and miraculously resurrected.

He’d take Red to the kid’s own place, but Frank, despite all their encounters, had never cared to tail him home. He’d meant it when he’d said he didn’t give a shit who Red was, even when he had figured out who it was under that mask.

There was always Frank’s safehouse; well-hidden and overlooked, however the unit presented a hazard to Red’s already precarious health. The building was old and decrepit. Even though he’d never skipped out on rent for the shithole, the power outages had always been frequent, and the water flow was regularly shut-off with zero explanation. Not to mention he was well overdue to restock his dismal food supply.

From a list of particularly shitty choices, he was left with only one truly viable option.

\---------------

Frank knocked at the door. He clenched his jaw and fought the impulse to pace as he waited for a response.

The kid was disturbingly still over his shoulder. He was lighter than Frank remembered – all hard edges and no fat; wiry muscle pulled over skin and bone. The loss of weight was worrying; his body left with no reserves to fight against the fever that had already set in. Frank could feel the burning heat radiating from Red through both the cold of the night and his thick winter layers.

He balled his fist and rapped on the door again, hard enough to make the frame shake slightly.

He could hear footsteps descending a set of stairs, interrupted by a faint thumping sound that was followed by quiet cursing. The lights were switched on and the door opened a crack; a confused head peeking through – eyes squinting into the dark.

“Frank?”

Frank grabbed hold of the door and pushed it open.

David, with little strength to hold him back, responded with an indignant squawk as Frank forced his way past him, moving with purpose towards someplace he could set Red down.

“Woah, woah, woah!” David hissed, rushed in front of him, and placed his hands on Frank’s chest. He dug his heels into the ground, his socks sliding across the wooden floor when his attempts to slow Frank failed.

“Frank – I’m fine with some late-night recon calls, but this is my home, okay?” He said, eyes wide, “My family is asleep upstairs. I can’t have you dragging in your dead things like a goddamn cat.”

Frank stilled, met David’s wide eyes, and growled, “He’s not dead.”

David raised his hands placatingly, and Frank took a moment to look him over. David had cleaned himself up nicely. His face clean-shaven, the dark circles that once rimmed his eyes lessened in severity, his mess of curls as tamed as it could be for a guy that had been awoken in the middle of the night by someone barging into his house.

David peered at Red over his shoulder.

“It’s a little difficult to tell with all the grime and blood.” David said in lieu of an apology.

He sniffed the air, then gagged; backing away and pulling a sleeve over his nose.

“_Jesus,_ what is that? Did you dig him out from a dump?”

Frank couldn’t smell it himself, but he imagined the two of them together were emitting quite a potent aroma.

“That’s me. He came from the graveyard.”

David’s face morphed from disgust to slightly horrified concern, “You are _not_ making a convincing argument for this man’s non-deadness.”

Frank ignored the comment and strode toward the basement, David tailing closely behind as he tried to get a better look at Red.

“Okay, if you’re going to be staying, might I just mention a few rules – the first being that I don’t condone torture in my house.”

Frank sighed. Now that he and Red were relatively safe, the exhaustion had begun to set in. Forty-six hours of no sleep finally catching up on him.

He should have just broken through one of the windows. At least then he could’ve dealt with David’s incessant questions later.

“Not planning on torturing him.” He murmured.

“You’re not?” David sounded genuinely put out by the answer. Which Frank supposed was fair. Torture had never been entirely out of his wheelhouse. Not for those that deserved it.

“In that case, can I ask if you’ve thought about taking the normal-person approach where you just drop him at a hospital?”

“Not safe. People would find out. Come after him.” Frank grumbled, keeping his answers short and clipped.

“Oh, fantastic. So, you thought it’d be a good idea to bring him here then?”

Frank stopped at the door leading to the basement and levelled his gaze to David’s.

“You going to kick me out, or are you just going to bitch about it all night?”

When he didn’t answer, Frank flicked the light to the stairwell and carefully readjusted Red; ensuring he was secure before he turned his back and made his way down the stairs.

He heard David release a frustrated noise, then a few moments later his steps were following behind.

“Do I at least get to know who I’m harbouring in my house?”

“The devil.”

“The devil.” David echoed, “You dug up the devil from a grave.”

“Yep.”

“I don’t remember signing up for this shit.” He replied, deadpan, “Can’t say I’m a huge fan of the idea of inviting Satan into my life.”

“We’ve finally got something in common, then.”

Frank lowered Red to the sofa that sat in the room’s corner.

The flesh at his throat was noticeably darker than the rest of his complexion. And when he pressed a hand to his bare forehead, his skin was flushed and clammy.

“I’m serious, Frank. Who is this guy, and how’d he end up lying half-dead on my couch?”

Frank gave a tired sigh.

“You ever heard of Daredevil?”

David rubbed the sleep from his eyes, “Name rings a bell. A lot of weird shit’s been going around New York lately, its kind of hard to keep up sometimes.”

“This one’s hard not to notice. Dumbass runs around Hell’s Kitchen with horns and a bright red suit.”

David froze, and Frank could feel his eyes boring holes into the back of his head.

“You mean the lunatic that’s been murdering people with pencils?”

David was a little confused, but the man was on the right track.

Frank hummed, “Mm. That’s the one.”

Sweat pooled down Red’s face and shivers shook his frame. Frank pulled off his jacket and pulled it over the kid’s shuddering form. David eyed the unusual gentleness with a bewildered curiosity.

“So, you two are what, exactly? Buddies?”

Frank raised an eyebrow, “Why? you jealous?”

“No.” David replied. Too quickly. Defensive.

“I just want to know that Lucifer here isn’t going to murder my children with their own school supplies.”

Frank recoiled, stung by the accusation, “We both know I wouldn’t have brought him here if I thought that was a possibility.”

The room fell into silence that was interrupted only by the sound of Red’s wet, broken breaths. Reminded of the task at hand, Frank got up and made his way back towards the stairs.

David startled, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Hospital.”

“The hos- what-“ David sputtered, “You can’t just dump Satan on my couch then go and rob a hospital!”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Frank said, sounding anything but that, “But I didn’t see any IV bags laying around on my way in. I don’t ‘spose you have any heavy painkillers or anything that’ll help kill off his fever, either?”

David frowned, but didn’t respond to his thick sarcasm.

“Didn’t think so.” Frank said, then turned, “I won’t be gone long.”

Red’s life depended on that.

“Trust me.” He called over his shoulder, “Your family will be fine. He’s not waking up any time soon.”

\---------------

Matt’s slow return to land of the living was less consciousness as it was a slowly compiling crescendo of pain and over-stimulation.

For a moment, he thought he was still in the ground, his senses hit with a barrage of information. He could hear and smell everything and nothing at the same time, the broken fragments of detail too fast for Matt to identify or discern from one another.

Of what he could tell, his eardrums rung with a dull roar, and nausea clawed sour at his throat. He could still taste the dirt, the thick metallic of blood, but now he was faced with the altogether more unpleasant sensation of his body flipping between feeling as if it had been set alight and dunked beneath a bath of ice. The air was stale here, no ventilation or fluctuating air currents. Like it’d been in the goddamn coffin.

Matt’s heartbeat thumped hard against his chest as his stomach plummeted.

Had he imagined his escape? Had the lack of oxygen driven him to hallucination and self-delusion?

Matt’s breathing picked up, and he jerked as he felt a hand against his shoulder.

Fisk’s men, he realised through the lightheaded dizziness. They had returned. Couldn’t have let him die so easily. Not when Fisk had likely accumulated a long list of ways to torment Matt during his time in prison. Burying him six feet under and depriving him of all sensation was only a taster of the things to come.

Matt’s body shook, he couldn’t fight them. 

The threatening presence leaned into his space, said something. Matt didn’t know what. The voice was distant and muffled; like he was trying to hear underwater.

They were likely taunting him. Calling out his helplessness. Blind man too pathetic to even stand on his own two feet. 

Matt smashed his forehead into the man above him. 

It was a stupid, desperate, futile action, but well worth the thrill of satisfaction that overtook the rush of agony that pulsated through his ribs. He felt the crunch of cartilage as the man’s nose broke under the impact and sensed the air shift as the man fell backwards. 

Matt’s contentment was cut short when another man jumped in and held him down. 

He struggled, tried vainly to wriggle away from his grasp, but this guy was stronger than the last, and Matt was at the end of his rope in terms of pain and fatigue. 

His arms and legs were pinned under the heavy weight. Matt yelled, but nothing came out. 

He was vaguely aware that he was having a panic attack; his breaths hitched, chest heavy, body numb and trembling. He couldn’t hear anything. Couldn’t see.

Just when he thought he was about to lose control of himself entirely, something familiar broke through the haze of fear. It was so slight that Matt had barely been able to pick up on it, but sure enough, it was there. 

The steady thump of a strong heartbeat. 

Matt recognised the calm rhythm, and he did everything he could to latch onto the sound. Released the tight tension in his muscles and slumped into the man’s grasp. Let everything else fade into the background as he retreated into a quiet daze; a blanket feeling of safety overriding his frantic mind and lulling him back into the darkness of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for those that continue to keep up with this. Updates may be slow as I'm pretty bogged down with uni atm.


	6. Chapter 6

It was becoming quickly apparent that Red had more fight in him than Frank had given him credit for. And Frank had given him a shitload of credit. 

By the time he had returned with the supplies, the devil had quite literally risen from the dead.

They should be calling him a cockroach rather than the devil. What with the way you could probably drop a bomb on the asshole and he’d still walk away, looking a little worse for wear but ready to start another fight regardless. He just didn’t know when to quit.

Frank couldn’t have been gone for more than forty-five minutes, and here he was, refusing to go down or make this in any way easy.

“Jesus! Fuck!” David cursed and fell to the ground, hands flying to his face as a thick stream of blood began to pour down his nose.

Frank dropped his bag of stolen supplies and leaped into action, using his own weight to restrain Red’s movement. 

The kid was weak, but that didn’t stop him from snapping up them like a wild animal, lips curled back and snarling, blood spitting from his mouth.

David was babbling nonsense in the corner, his head lifted as he pressed tissues to the bloody mess that was his nose.

“I think he broke my nose.” He said, his voice nasally, throat clogged with blood.

“Yeah, the little shit is good at that,” Frank grumbled.

“You’ve fought him?” He asked, gaze caught on the kid’s skinny, filthy frame as he frantically fumbled under Frank’s grasp.

“We’ve gone a few rounds.” He replied, not caring to elaborate any further than that, directed their attention to the more pressing matter, “When you’re done feeling sorry for yourself can you get me some Ambien from my bag?”

David, for once in his life, shut his mouth and did what Frank asked. He listened as David shuffled around behind them, his patience wanning the longer Red struggled. Frank twisted his head around to find him crouched over the bag of medical equipment he’d stolen.

“Not that, dumbass. My bag.”

“Well how the fuck was I supposed to know that?” 

“Lieberman.”

“Going!” He shot back agitatedly, climbing the stairs two steps at a time.

Red, meanwhile, was working himself into a fit. His breathing wheezy and broken and sweat pouring off him by the bucket. His mind flashing back to the graveyard, Frank grabbed Red’s hand and pressed it to the same point at his chest. He focused on keeping his heart-rate calm and steady, hoping that the kid would intuitively follow suit. 

It didn’t illicit an instant change, but Red’s flailing slowed, and gradually his body succumbed to exhaustion as he slumped into the couch. His eyes closed and he eventually went limp beneath Frank, though his breaths remained short and choppy, like his body was still trying to conserve the amount of air he was taking in.

It’s at this point that David came bounding down the stairs, panting from the exertion and unable to breathe through his nose. He took one look at Red’s motionless form and sighed dramatically before dropping the pill bottle onto the armrest and taking a seat on the ground beside them; resting his back against the couch. 

Frank eased away from where he had been pinning the kid and sat back against Red’s thighs, letting his hand fall away from his chest.

David looked up toward the ceiling, stretched one of his sleeves over his hand and pressed it gingerly to his nose, using it to soak up some of the blood.

“You realise those are prescription sleeping pills, why do you have them stashed away beneath all your murder weapons? How’d you even get them?”

Frank responded with a low hum, “What makes you think I didn’t get a prescription?”

David quietened at that, “Can’t imagine you ever going to a doctor.”

To be fair, he hadn’t. Curtis had pretty much forced him to take some when he’d disclosed to him that okay yes – maybe he hadn’t gotten much shut-eye lately, which had been closely followed by no, just because he had nightmares, didn’t mean that he had PTSD.

Frank took the damn pills, if only to shut his friend up, though more often than not they sat unused, collecting dust at the very bottom of his duffel bag. He’d prefer the bone-deep exhaustion over witnessing another gaping hole in Sarah’s head, or Leo’s blood spilling over his hands. Besides, Frank could make better use of those sleepless nights.

David twisted around; expression pensive as he scanned Red’s face. His eyes, Frank realised.

“He…” David pressed his lips together.

He must’ve witnessed Red’s sightless gaze searching the room during his panic. Was likely piecing together the feasibility of the concept of a blind man running around Hell’s Kitchen and beating the shit out of people with his fists. Frank let him think. God knows it took him a while to work through the facts of it all.

Frank got up, picking up his jacket from where it had been thrown to the floor and re-situating it over Red before he rifled through the bag of equipment and meds he’d retrieved from the hospital.

He pulled out the bag of IV fluid and looked around for something he could use as a stand, before his eyes caught on a coat stand resting against some boxes in the corner of the room. He brought it over and suspended the IV bag from the elevated stand, attached the tubing, then cut away the dark fabric at Red’s forearm.

As Frank continued to set up the IV, David remained on the floor; eyes glazed over as he processed this whole shitshow. 

Once he felt that everything was in working order, Frank rose to his feet again and checked the flow of fluid into the IV. It was somewhat of a ghetto setup. And Frank was going to have to give Red a full-bodied look over to make sure he hadn’t done any permanent damage. As well as get some cloths and cold water to see if he could help deal with his fever. But it would have to do for now.

Frank slid back into the seat of the couch, positioning himself so that he was facing the entryway. He pulled Red’s legs over his lap and rested his head against the back cushions.

“Did something…” David finally voiced, “I mean, has he always…?” He didn’t get any further than that, as if he was still getting his head around the ridiculous impossibility of the implication himself.

“Been blind as long as I’ve known him.” Frank stated. Saw no reason from keeping it from him.

David rested back against the couch, stared into the darkness of the basement. He lingered on that, processing the words in silence before he frowned, wetting his lips.

“… He’s one of them, right?” 

“Them?”

“You know – the different ones.”

Frank snorted, “Yeah, he’s different alright.”

“No-“ David made a frustrated noise and rose to his feet, “God. Do I really need to say it?”

Without lifting his head, Frank eyed him down and raised a single eyebrow.

“The super-powered people. The fucking alien gods and super soldiers and big green monsters that can tear up entire cities.”

Frank paused. He didn’t really know what Red was, per say. His senses were enhanced way beyond human capabilities, he knew that much at least. But other than that? 

“Pretty sure he’s just a stubborn, blind bastard with two sticks and too much determination.”

“Yeah, okay, sure. But there’s gotta be something more than that, right? What’s his power?”

Frank pursed his lips, “Catholic guilt.”

David groaned.

“I’m being serious.”

Frank closed his eyes, took a deep breath and released it, “Don’t know how he does the shit he does, okay? I gave up trying to question it a long time ago.” 

David’s brows pinched together in thought, but he restrained himself from further making queries.

Frank was slowly slipping his way into unconsciousness when David had to ask one last question

“Can you at least tell me his name?”

Frank went quiet.

“Not my secret to give.”

“Oh good,” David nodded, “Satan it is, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Only a tiny chapter for now but Uni semester ends in about a month so I'll likely be able to post a lot more of this when it's over. Thanks for your comments, kudos and patience. I have a tendency to not complete fics but I like this story and don't want to give up on it so hopefully I can work towards an actually completed work.


	7. Chapter 7

Matt awoke to a hammering ache in his head and clothes a size too large.

The hoodie’s sleeves went past his fingertips and the sweats hung off his hips and bunched at his ankles. They were, however, soft against his skin, and felt cleaner than being caked in grime and the stench of death, which was more than he could ask for at this point. He tried not to dwell on the fact that he’d been stripped of his clothes and washed without so much of an inch of awareness.

Ears ringing, he swung his legs over the side of the couch, then proceeded to spend the next five minutes fighting off the onslaught of nausea the movement brought. He brought a hand to his face, confused when the motion tugged uncomfortably at something attached to his wrist. He examined where the needle pierced his skin, following the connected tubing with his fingers upwards until a voice broke into the silence.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you, Red.”

Matt jumped at the low, gravelly tone, cursing through the time and effort it took to strain his senses back into some working order.

Frank. He’d survived his little trip out the window then.

Jesus, it was like waking up in the Church all over again. He should’ve been able to notice him. Foggy had been able to sneak up on him once in College, and that was only because he’d had a gnarly hangover, and his body had been so accustomed to feeling safe and comfortable in his presence that it hadn’t registered him as a threat.

“Might as well get comfortable.” Matt twitched at the sound of Frank’s voice coming from a new location, uncomfortable with his inability to track the man, “Between your lungs and the fever you’re fighting off, you shouldn’t even be conscious.”

From the way the sound bounced off the walls behind Frank, and the direction of air flow, Frank stood between Matt and the entryway. If he were anyone else, it could’ve been played off as a casual movement, but Matt wasn’t about to be fooled. Frank’s message was clear. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Matt swallowed hard, a shiver ran through him, arm hairs standing on end. He shifted forward and hissed his displeasure at the movement; foregoing any plans to stand. Which only managed to confirm to Frank his dizziness.

It was difficult to get a read on Frank normally, let alone with his senses cracking the shits as they were. Every time he tried zoning his focus in on him, the loud, strong pulse of his heartbeat drowned out all other sensation; trumping all other attributes that Matt once had attached to Frank. It was both perplexing and inadvertently infuriating. Matt wasn’t a baby bird; helpless and resorting to imprint on the closest calming pulse whenever he was in danger.

Matt opened his mouth to speak, cheeks heating when all that came out was a pitifully hoarse croak, before he cleared his throat and tried again, more quietly, “Whose clothes am I wearing?”

It spoke levels to Matt’s current state that of all the questions he could’ve posed at that moment, this was the one he’d gone for.

“Same guy whose nose you broke.”

Matt hesitated, frowning. He couldn’t recall breaking anything last night, unless he was the subject of the breaking.

Frank caught on without Matt having to admit to the fragile state of mind, “You’ve been out of it. Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a few gaps in your memory.”

Matt wet his lips, and tilted his head, trying vainly to get a better read on the room beyond Frank’s measured heartbeat.

“How’d you find me?”

The better question, the one at the tip of his tongue, but Matt dared not speak, was why. He and Frank weren’t on the best of terms, even on their good days. Maybe he felt that he needed to even out the score after Matt had saved him from the Irish, though Frank wasn’t really one to feel obliged to anything.

“Heard you died. Decided I should dig you up to check someone did the job right.” Frank stated, his pulse even and true.

Matt snorted, then groaned when the movement elicited a sharp stab to his ribs.

He gritted his teeth, “Where’s my suit.”

“What? Your hyper-senses can’t sniff it out through a few solid walls and timber?”

“I don’t have time for this-“

“I gotta admit, Red. I was wrong,” Frank interrupted, “I wouldn’t call the red get-up pajamas – that suit could at least deflect a bullet. The ripped-up shreds left from what you were wearing last night. _Those_ were pajamas.”

Matt, having heard enough of this conversation, went to rip out the IV. Frank was on him in an instant; gripped his wrist and held it firmly in place.

He tensed, readying himself for a fight.

“I need to go Frank.” He voiced quietly, his tone adamant.

Frank wasn’t swayed, “That right, Red? Because you’re the hero? You gotta be the one to save the day, put away the bad men, protect the innocent?”

Matt sighed. Because this was how it always was. Frank stood in his way, challenging him - always pushing. This time, though, Matt didn’t have the energy to push back.

“Better than sitting here, moping.”

“You wouldn’t be able to protect yourself right now, let alone anyone else.” Frank pointed out harshly.

Matt ripped his arm from Frank’s grip, “Watch me.”

“And then what are you going to do? Throw Fisk back into prison? ‘Cause that worked out so well the last time didn’t it.”

Matt responded with a glower as the fiery pain in his ribs spread lower to the pit of his abdomen. Matt breathed through the rush of resentment that hit him like a tidal wave. The worst thing about the comment was that Matt couldn’t deny it. Frank spoke truth. Fisk’s release, in large part, was on him for not having taken care of it the first time around, or the second time around. Matt’s current position, the absolute chaos that was breaking out in the city. It was on Matt. And it was his responsibility to right the wrongs that he himself had set into motion.

Matt went silent at the sound of another presence as footsteps descended into the room.

“Hey Frank, I-“ The man stopped in his tracks, his pulse spiking.

“Oh, you’re awake!” He exclaimed, before he leaned to Frank and whispered, “He’s awake, right? Not hallucinating again?”

“He can hear you.”

“Hi,” Matt said, before remembering that this was probably the same guy Frank had been talking about before, and added, “sorry for breaking your nose.”

The man seemed caught off guard by the admittance, “Oh, yeah, no… It’s uh… It’s fine, you weren’t exactly… Thinking straight. Totally understandable.”

The nervous, awkward form of a speech reminded him a lot of Foggy. He sounded out of his element, and just as bewildered in terms of how to work his way through this situation as Matt was. He wondered for a moment how someone like him had ended up working with Frank.

“So, uh… I’m David by the way-“ Matt sensed a shift in the air as he held out his hand for him to shake.

Matt didn’t react to the gesture, or offer his own name in turn, and after a few moments David cleared his throat and dropped his arm, “Oh, shit – sorry, right. Um…”

“You can quit being an asshole Red, he saw you when you came in.”

Matt tilted his head toward Frank, brows furrowing, “You told him who I am?”

“Not what I said.”

Matt bit his tongue and breathed through his frustration. His lungs were on fire. His throat felt like he was gargling shards of glass. He wanted to keel over and throw up his guts. He didn’t have the time nor patience for this.

He turned to David, “Thank you for letting Frank and I stay in your home. I’m sorry if my presence here has caused you any inconvenience. We’ll be leaving now.”

The responses came simultaneously; an uneasy “you don’t have to do that-“ from David, and a firm, “We’re not going anywhere-“ from Frank.

“You can’t keep me here.” He shot at Frank.

“I’m here to make sure you don’t undo all the bullshit I just went through to save your ass. The only thing that’s imprisoning you right now is your inability to climb a set of stairs.”

Matt crossed his arms, refusing to acknowledge the truth in those words, and the room proceeded to fall into an uncomfortable silence.

David coughed, “So, uh… How’d you two meet?” He asked, trying to steer the atmosphere into something a little less hostile.

“He shot me in the head.” Matt stated.

David required a moment to take in and process that response.

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard.” He said, voice slightly manic, “He what?”

“It was a glancing blow.” Frank grumbled.

David turned to Frank, “You _shot_ him?”

“He got in my way.”

“I was protecting my client.” Matt hissed.

“_In the head_?”

Frank crossed his arms. “He was wearing a helmet.” He replied, as if that somehow justified the act.

“It’s a cowl.” Matt interjected.

“It’s a damn clown-suit is what it is,” He countered, then added, as an afterthought, “Wouldn’t have been an issue if you could just stay in your own lane.”

“Protecting the lives of the people in this city is exactly my lane.”

“Okay, wait –“ David stepped in, “Haven’t you not been on a murder spree of late?”

“You haven’t told him?” Matt directed toward Frank. Unsure if he was more affronted that Frank was letting this guy stumble around in the dark, or that David was perfectly okay with harbouring two mass murderers.

“Red is dealing with something of an identity theft issue.” Frank explained, tone disinterested and nonchalant.

“So…” David frowned, “You haven’t killed anyone?”

Matt reigned in his hackles and settled back into the couch, “Not intentionally.”

“Altar boy here has a code. Makes him a massive pain of the ass to work around.”

“Glad to hear that your value for human life hasn’t changed over the past year or so,” Matt replied sarcastically.

David rose a hand to scrub at his face, “This is… A lot to process. You know, I came here just wanting to know if you were in the mood for some waffles.”

“You should have led with that.” Frank said, his interest peaked for the first time since the conversation began. He looked to Matt, “You.” He pointed to the ground, “Stay.”

Matt scowled.

“Did you uh… Want any?” David asked, oddly considerate regarding the situation.

Frank stopped him from having to describe how the very thought of waffles made him want to puke at that moment by taking hold of David and dragging him up the stairs, “I’ll save something for him later.”

\------------------------------------

Later that morning, Frank returned to the basement with a side of leftovers in one hand and a tub of warm water in the other. Red sat up slowly, his unfocused gaze followed him as he set the plate of food down. It was unnerving; the way he was able to track Frank’s movement. Made him wonder once again just how blind the kid actually was.

“Lean your head over.” He said, foregoing the small talk and getting straight to the root of what he was here for.

Red blinked at him, owlish and haggard.

“What?"

Frank placed the tub of water in front of him, "Either you let me wash it or I shave it."

Red gaped at him for a couple of seconds, processing, before he finally located his vocal cords.

"I can wash my own hair,"

Frank nodded – had expected and was prepared to deal with stubborn resistance from square-one.

"Alright. Lift your arms over your head and I'll leave it to you."

Red narrowed his eyes, and his fingers twitched, but his limbs remained still at his sides.

“You’re a dick.”

“Clippers then?” Frank asked, ignoring the remark.

Red complied with a final huff, pulling down the hoodie and leaning over until his forehead touched the rim of the bucket.

Red lapsed into an exhausted silence while he got to work massaging out the dirt, grease, and grime. His hair really was filthy, though he supposed that was expected for someone who'd been buried alive the night prior. After a couple minutes of Frank combing his hair through the water, Red’s eyes fell closed.

Frank hadn't gone out of his way to make the experience a soothing one, but through no fault of his own, Red seemed to go pliant under his fingertips. A response that Frank found mystifying and just this side of intoxicating - the way the kid relaxed completely into putty. Anyone else would be all too wary of just how quickly the punisher could end them in such a vulnerable position. Instead, Frank tried to not be distracted by the way the tension seemed to ease out of Red's brow as he rubbed his fingers gently along his scalp; or the way his head subconsciously tilted towards his touch like a dog enjoying the attention.

He pulled Red's hair away from the back of his neck, until it hung wetly over the bowl and dripped into the water. And that's when he noticed the bruises. All over where Red's neck met his back and disappearing beneath David’s hoodie, no doubt deeper and uglier over his ribcage. He’d missed them, earlier, with the room too dark, and Frank altogether too sleep-deprived and detached from the situation to notice the colouration while he freed Red from his mangled clothes and mechanically washed away the blood and dirt from his body with a wet cloth.

Without thinking, Frank brushed his fingers over the darkest visible region of skin, and Red flinched.

"Someone step on you?"

Red hummed, “Fisk’s men. I’ll spare you the details. Not like you’re a stranger to torture.”

Frank was being soft, he knew it, because he knew what kind of a man Red was. Knew that they had more in common than either of them would like to admit, and more often than not people needed protection from them, and not the other way around. And yet looking at those bruises still made him angry and sick. Worse was the idea that if he kept looking, he'd find more, because he was sure Red’s doppelganger had left plenty.

“You were buried alive. Think you’ve got the line between torture and murder confused.” Frank murmured.

“It was soundproof.”

The comment hits him from left field, and it takes Frank a minute to wrap his head around what Red was talking about, “What?”

“The… Box. The coffin. They had it fused with a sealant and covered in some sort of… I couldn’t make out what the material was – probably something Fisk had specially manufactured for me – but it blocked out everything. I couldn’t…” Red paused.

“I couldn’t see.”

Waking up in a coffin, six-feet underground was disconcerting enough, but Red’s senses were so deeply ingrained into his very being that cutting them off seemed unimaginable. It’s at that point that he realised that Red may be right. It was one thing to kill Red. Any back-alley mobster could accomplish that with enough knowledge and planning. Fisk was something else, something that raised the hair on the back of his neck. The immediacy with which he managed to assert influence and corruption, to escape prison, discover the kid’s identity and pick apart his life piece by piece. Cruel and vicious didn't seem to capture it.

Rather than voice any of those thoughts, he worked his fingers through an impressively tangled knot at the base of his hair and seethed silently.

The water was practically muddy by the time Red's hair was even passably clean. He passed him a dry towel, allowing the kid to at least have the dignity of drying himself off. Though, without being able to lift his arms, Red had to crane his head down to do it.

“You mind telling me who’s running around in your big boy pajamas?” Frank asked, moving away the bucket.

Red opened his mouth, then clicked it shut. His leg shaking slightly. He swallowed.

“When I figure that out, I'll let you know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm soft. Apologies if it seems ooc


	8. Chapter 8

To say that Matt had been going through a rough patch lately was something of an understatement. Somewhere between the prison break, a midnight cab ride into the Hudson, his subsequent frozen trek back to his apartment, and getting his ass beaten, broken, and buried, he’d contracted a nasty fever. Proving once again to Matt that when shit hit the fan, it was an all-in, all-at-once experience.

Matt absolutely detested being sick. It was bad enough having his senses out of sorts. It was considerably worse with the added burning skin, shivering, sweat-drenched body, and bones that ached as if they’d been wrought inside out.

He spent the first day on the edge of consciousness, arms wrapped around his middle as he took shallow, shaking breaths. The pain – unlike his hearing, which went in and out in waves – was relatively constant. Matt would still choose being buried under a pile of earth over being crushed by a building, though he had no desire to repeat either scenario after enduring through both. Especially when the former only seemed to aggravate the injuries he’d sustained from the latter.

The foreign surroundings hadn’t helped to quell his ill health. Considering his inability to pick up the familiar rattling vibration of New York’s subway underfoot, he was in the suburbs; far from the city centre. The couch… Futon? Felt lumpy and awkward beneath him, pressing uncomfortably into his ribs, regardless of the position he tried to lay. The blanket wasn’t much better; cotton scratching across sensitive skin. He could sense the darkness of the basement around him – the air current motionless and occasional footfalls against wooden slats.

There was a high-pitched exclamation as a woman on the floor above released a surprised yelp, and Matt tensed, prepared to leap into action at a moment’s notice.

“Pete! Shit – Frank.” The woman let out an awkward laugh.

Matt’s body released some of its tightness at the response, though his brow furrowed at the woman’s instinctual reaction, his head tilted as he listened.

“Sorry-“ Frank started, before being quickly overtaken by the woman’s light tone.

“God. For a big guy you’re really good at not making much noise.”

“Should’ve said something-“ He added sheepishly.

“Oh, no – don’t apologise. It’s fine. Just surprised me is all. Everything okay?”

Matt twitched as he heard rapid footfalls descending the living room stairs, gait short and heartbeat irregularly fast – young.

“Yeah, uh… I was looking for David. He around?”

“You just missed him. He left a few minutes ago to pick up Leo from soccer practise.”

“Right-“

“He shouldn’t be too long.”

Reaching the kitchen, the child’s light tread pulled to a stop.

“Hey Frank!” The boy greeted, sounding bizarrely pleased to be seeing a face that sent even the most hardcore of criminals running, “Dad mentioned you were here, but he told us not to bother you.”

“Are you kidding? Takes more than the likes of you to bother me.”

“So… You’ve got time to play ball?” The boy asked, elated. He released a little noise of exertion that confused Matt for a moment, before he heard inflated leather hitting skin as Frank caught what must’ve been a football that the boy had sent across the room.

“Hey! Zach, you know better than that. You boys take it outside.”

Frank moved towards the boy, releasing a quick, “Yes ma’am.” Before he led him away.

The whole interaction was… In a word, odd. From the fact that this seemingly normal family was so comfortable with aiding and abetting two of New York’s most wanted criminals, to the way he slipped into the family system so naturally; as if he were a pseudo-uncle rather than a convicted felon.

A shiver racked Matt’s body. He tugged the blanket up to his chin, turned away and pressed his head into the cushions of the couch.

From there, his thoughts were lost to a thick fog that settled heavy over his mind. He hadn’t known how long he’d spaced out for, only that he was brought to awareness by the sound of a familiar, strong heartbeat.

“You look like shit.”

Frank.

Matt blinked his eyes open, unaware that he had closed them. He couldn’t place where the man was, which was… disconcerting, to say the least.

“Thanks.” He mumbled into the couch, the back of his throat sour and swollen.

He braced his ribs with an arm and pushed himself to a seated position, fighting off the resulting dizziness and nausea that came with the shift.

“Here.”

It was silent for a moment, and Matt belatedly realised that Frank was probably holding something out for him to take.

When he didn’t accept the item offered, Frank grumbled something beneath his breath and forcibly guided his hand from his ribs to a glass of water, then extended Matt’s bandaged fingers and placed a pill in his palm.

He must’ve assumed Matt was being antagonistic for antagonism’s sake – an assumption that suited him just fine if it meant Frank didn’t realize that he was currently unable to detect his movements. The loss of his senses was a vulnerability that Matt would rather not share, even knowing its triviality in light of what Frank already knew. 

When Matt remained silent and unmoving, Frank gruffly prompted, “You’re hurting. No point denying it.”

Matt frowned. He didn’t want the drug fogging up his already muddled mind. And some depraved part of him felt he didn’t deserve the relief. This was punishment for his cockiness. He had thought he was ahead of Fisk. Instead, he’d been effectively herding the sheep to slaughter. Jasper and his son were dead because of him. Foggy and Karen could’ve died just as easily, and Matt would’ve been helpless to stop it.

He leaned over and put the cup of water on the table, jumping a moment later when he heard the object shatter against the ground as water spilled across the floor and broken bits of glass bounced off his skin.

Matt winced. He must’ve placed it too close to the table’s edge.

He had practically felt Frank’s angry gaze bore into him, analysing. Determining the likelihood of the action being accidental.

Matt had expected the man to blow a fuse and start throwing punches. Instead, he muttered, “Pain in my ass,” then dropped to a knee and began picking the broken shards from the floor.

Guilt crawling up his throat, Matt squeezed the pill in his hand and bent over to help Frank. His ribs strongly protested this, and unbidden, a pained groan slipped from his lips.

Frank growled, sounding genuinely pissed this time, and slapped away his hand before pushing him back into the couch.

“Just take the damn pill and do what you’re good at.”

Matt’s lips stiffened into a thin line and he relaxed back into the couch, “And what’s that, exactly?”

“Nothing.”

In lieu of a proper retort, Matt pettishly flicked the pill towards the general direction of Frank’s voice. There was a very small clack as the pill met its target.

Frank stilled and went scarily quiet, save for the grind of his teeth, his jaw clenched tight.

“Do you avoid hospitals, or did they take one look at your shitty, petulant attitude and make it a point to avoid you?”

Matt thought of Claire, though he kept his lips sealed, refusing to give Frank the validation.

“What’s your plan, Red? You gonna pray the pain away?”

Matt gave a humourless laugh, wincing slightly when it amplified the ache in his chest.

“Would be fairly pointless considering I no longer have any faith behind the principle.”

“Hm…” Frank returned to his task, though Matt could still feel the tension and unreleased frustration radiating from the man.

“Ironic coming from the guy running around as the devil.”

Matt twitched, the furrow between his brows deepening, “I don’t wear the suit anymore-“

“Goddamn right you don’t.” Frank snapped.

Matt mouth fell open, then clicked shut when he couldn’t think of a valid objection to the comment.

Frank set down the broken shards onto the table.

“Look Red. I need to check those ribs. Whether you want to be uncomfortable while I do so is up to you.”

“I’m fine.” He ground out.

Frank was unconvinced.

“Suffering it is then.”

Without so much as a word of warning, Frank yanked the bottom of his hoodie upwards, revealing his midsection. Matt flinched and he flung up his arms blindly. Frank easily deflected the limbs, pinning them to his sides. A sudden wave of heat and cold twisted up Matt's spine, his breath catching. He felt exposed, in too weak of a condition to oppose Frank.

Taking notice of his reaction, Frank stopped.

“Red…”

Matt took a moment to calm his frazzled nerves. If Frank had any intentions of hurting him, it would’ve been a hell of a lot easier to leave him to die in the hole he found him in.

“I said I’m fine.” He croaked.

Frank scoffed, “Yeah, and I called bullshit.”

Matt breathed out, slowly counting upwards to ten before he let his body slump into the couch. Clearly, Frank wasn’t going to drop this, and it would be easier for the both of them if he just relaxed and got it over with.

“You’re not going to find anything out of place.” He said in way of consent.

“Careful altar boy, that’s dangerously optimistic.” Frank grumbled, before he got to work assessing Matt’s chest.

He cringed away from Frank’s touch when his shockingly cold fingertips met fever-raw skin. Matt focused on taking calm, even breaths as Frank poked around his ribs. The light, targeted pressure that pressed into his deepest bruising caused sharp bolts of agony up his spine. He released a hiss through his teeth when Frank probed at a particularly sore spot, his body instinctively tensing.

Okay, so maybe he had a cracked rib or two – it was still highly unlikely that he’d done any serious damage to his internal organs.

Frank let up with a quiet disapproving noise, then moved on to the next area.

“You mind explaining this whole shit-show to me?” He asked, pulling Matt’s attention away from his discomfort.

Matt looked up toward the direction of Frank’s voice, thinking. There was no telling how much Frank already knew of the situation, and he wasn’t exactly eager to spill his whole life story to Frank.

“FBI’s looking for me.” He settled on.

“Yeah, that tends to happen when you play dress up and beat the shit out of people.”

Matt wet his lips, “The FBI’s looking for Matt Murdock.”

He could’ve sworn Frank’s heart jumped a beat at the admission, but the steady rhythm was maintained before Matt could pin down the skip. They’d never openly discussed who he was out of the mask. Frank knew, of course. Had put the pieces together without Matt having to say a word, but he’d never admitted the identity to him outright.

“They know?”

That he was the devil? Matt thought. Or that he wasn’t a dead man?

“They sent a team to search my apartment.”

“That got anything to do with this?” Frank asked, poking a finger into an area of his midsection that was unmarred by bruising.

Matt swatted at the finger; his sides sensitive to the contact.

“No. That’s the other guy.” Matt sighed, “My thoughts are that, at best, Fisk is manipulating their agents.”

Frank grunted. It didn’t take a genius to know that much. Fisk’s corruption was blindingly apparent. The crime-lord was sitting pretty in a million-dollar penthouse.

“At worst?”

Matt had examined the evidence. The Albanians, Fisk’s transfer to the penthouse, the prison, Jasper’s death. The bureau had been satisfied with using Fisk, though the more information Matt dug up, the more it registered who exactly was using who. All of it pointed toward agent Nadeem making exactly the same mistake Matt had - convincing himself that the situation was under his own control.

“He owns all of it.”

Matt closed his eyes, defeated, “I was so goddamn _stupid_ to think I had Fisk cornered. He… He’s corrupted everything. The prison. The police. The feds. The judges, jury, the goddamn district attorney, anyone remotely connected to the case. No matter what I do, I’m fighting a losing battle.”

Frank went silent at that, unsettled with the weight of the knowledge.

“This is why no one likes Lawyers,” He muttered, “Even when they can admit they’re wrong, they still find a way to make everyone else feel like an asshole about it.”

Finished with his examination, Frank pulled the fabric back down and gave his chest a single hard pat that elicited a pained groan from Matt.

“So, the whole wide world is stacked up against the hero,” Frank exclaimed, sarcastic, “What’re you gonna do about it?”

Matt settled into a more comfortable position and rubbed at his temples; his headache having returned with renewed vigour.

“Trying to take down Fisk using the system was never going to work. The devil’s all I have left.”

Frank snorted derisively, “We’re all fucked in that case. You’re lucky to be alive. An inch higher and those cracked ribs would’ve left you suffocating from a punctured lung. Even with what you’ve got now… Let’s just say you’re not going to be in fighting condition any time soon.”

Meditation should speed up the healing process. Healthy or not, he needed to be back on his feet. Matt didn’t have much choice in that matter.

Though, he didn’t divulge this to Frank, who had for some reason, at some indiscernible point between the rocky start of their relationship and now, taken interest in Matt’s wellbeing. He wasn’t about to disrupt the tenuous accord they'd somehow achieved by letting him know that he would be going straight for the head of the snake the moment his legs could hold his weight.

Instead, he directed him toward something that had been plaguing Matt’s thoughts the moment he’d woken.

“What are we doing, Frank? Why am I here.”

Frank thought about it for a moment, before replying, “This guy – David. I hated his fucking guts when I first met him. I’m telling you, Red. I could kill him.”

“Well that’s on-brand for you.” Matt muttered.

“You know why?” Frank continued, ignoring the comment, “He did what I couldn’t. He left at the right time. He was able to protect his family. Keep his distance. He was smart. There was a light at the end of the tunnel for him… Me being here, stepping foot in this house. That’s putting everything he has in danger. It is the goddamn antithesis of the whole point of doing all the work we did to get his life back in the first place. I am putting everything on the line to have you here, because there is nowhere else to go. So how about you stop your moping and bitching and try being grateful for once in your life.”

Matt bit his tongue. Restrained from arguing that he wasn’t Frank’s responsibility. That Matt hadn’t been given a choice, or even a voice, in any of this.

“That’s not…” He knew he was tip-toeing around the question, the words at the tip of his tongue, “I meant _why_. Why am I here?”

Frank released a frustrated sigh, “You deaf as well as blind?”

Matt hesitated, before finally spitting it out.

“Why’d you save my life.”

Frank stilled, lingering on the question for so long Matt wouldn’t have known he were there if it weren’t for his heartbeat.

When he did move, it was to rub agitatedly at the back of his head. Matt knew the spot. It was something of a subconscious tic for the man. Could remember Karen describe the images from the X-ray scans she’d received from Reyes. He wondered if Frank could still feel it. What it must be like having a scar like that through the head.

“I was curious.” He stated.

“Curious.” Matt echoed, disbelieving despite the unmistakably steady pulse of Frank’s heart.

“Yep. Wanted to see if someone could take more punishment than me.”

Red dropped his head in attempt to hide the small smirk creeping across his expression at the sheer absurdity of it all. He took a deep breath through his nose, schooling his face into something more neutral.

“Your verdict?”

Frank shrugged, “Jury’s still out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've finished my exams and have been freed from the purgatory of Uni for a few months, so in theory, I should be able to work on this a lot more now. Sorry again for the long wait between updates.


	9. Chapter 9

After convincing Frank that his heart wasn’t going to flatline if left unchecked every couple of hours, he agreed to remove the IV, though he was strongly advised to stay prone. He begrudgingly acknowledged the order, laying low for a couple of days and taking some rare recovery time, knowing full well that if he weren’t under the close supervision, he’d already be out in the field.

He still didn’t really understand Frank’s angle here. _Curiosity. _That’s a load of bullshit if Matt’s ever heard it. If he was actually interested in seeing how much pain, how much _punishment _he could endure, he would’ve left Matt to fend for himself, or threw in a few punches of his own, not pull him from his own grave and tend to his injuries.

Perhaps he was trying to get even – put them on equal footing after Matt had saved him from the Irish. Or maybe Frank had seen a glimpse of the sort of monster the Devil could be left unchecked by fickle things like morality or decency and wondered what he could become if took off the leash. Hell, Matt could chalk it up to him having already invested too many resources into saving his ass, and not making sure Matt went through the appropriate healing process would be a waste of that. It could be a combination of those things, or none of them. Matt had never been good at getting into Frank’s head. He’d once thought it was because the man was insane; a bonified nutjob, unleashing chaos upon Hell’s Kitchen. Then it was because he simply couldn’t relate – their ideology and perspective of the world was so different that Matt couldn’t figure out the inner mechanical workings of a man that could pull the trigger on another human being so easily, and not have the death haunt him. No remorse. No forgiveness. No problem. Rape and killing and fucked up backstory or not. Bad guy. Dead guy. Plain and simple. Before, he’d been terrified by the simplicity of it all. Now… Now he was near envious of Frank. And in acknowledging this, Matt was almost too afraid to see things from his point of view – to put himself in his shoes - god forbid he ever _agree _with the man.

He had more pressing concerns to worry about when, after the infection had left his aching lungs, his diaphragm returning to the state where it was burning with pain from the tension and cracked ribs rather than the sickness, and even once his sinuses and throat cleared, the flaws in his senses remained. All he needed to do in the past to amplify his sensory capabilities was to focus on the object or subject of interest. That control had slipped through his fingers, seemed to go in and out like waves now; a tipping scale that would bounce between the buzzing between his ears being so loud that he wouldn’t hear Frank talking right next to him, to being able to detect the exact brand of dish soap the house two blocks over used through scent alone. It was unsettling. Freaked Matt out. He could only lay on the couch, aching, and hope that this was something that would eventually pass.

At the very least, with the fever gone, he could better discern between the heat of the room – which was more of a cold chill – and his own warmth radiating from his body. Overall though, it seemed that too many of the pieces of the puzzle that made up his sight were lost or broken, leaving an elementary, foggy understanding of his surroundings. The best he could do right now was to use echolocation – clapping his hands or clicking his tongue and using the way the sound ricocheted off objects and returned to get an impression of the room.

He knew that he was underground – a basement, most likely, as it was impossible to tell the time of day without the heat of the sun moving across his back or subtle changes in the air temperature. It was really screwing with his body’s natural clock, making him uneasy and restless. After a few cycles of tossing and turning and letting out hard little breaths as the movements jarred all the tender parts of him, Matt gave up on the idea of sleep. His pain causing this to be even more of an ordeal now that it was amplified as Frank could no longer sneak pain relief into his bloodstream though the IV.

Speaking of which, he was able to pick up on the man’s heavy footfalls travelling down the staircase.

“You disappeared again.” Matt noted tiredly.

He grunted dismissively, “Following up on some leads.”

His heart told Matt that the words weren’t a lie, but they were also altogether too vague to resemble anything close to truth. If nothing else, Frank was disciplined, and regimented – came in to check on Matt and give him food on a set schedule. Although not the only, it was the easiest way to track the passage of time down here. Lately, the period between his visits had felt much longer than expected, and Matt had more than a few ideas why.

“You smell like blood.” Matt stated.

Things being how they were, Matt couldn’t smell much of anything on Frank, and for a couple of seconds, when the man failed to respond, brow drawn in confusion, Matt wondered if he was going to call him on his bluff.

“How - ?” Frank eventually muttered to himself, “Showered three goddamn times, fuck-“

And that was about all the confirmation of his whereabouts that Matt needed.

“You won’t find him.” Matt said, ignoring Frank’s grumbling, “And you can’t fight Fisk. Not without me.”

“I can’t? Or you don’t want me to?”

“Pick one.” He snarled, not appreciating the challenge in his tone.

Matt could feel the adrenaline stirring, the tension sparking between them, and prepared himself for confrontation. Perhaps a little too eagerly, as Frank, for once, didn’t rise to the bait.

He dismissed him with a wave of his hand, “Sarah’s invited you upstairs for dinner. Probably startin’ to feel weird about never having met the gremlin living in her basement.”

Matt, though not the least bit mollified, let the topic drop.

“Fine.”

Would be rude to refuse at this point anyway, especially after everything the family had risked by allowing Frank to keep him here.

He pushed himself up – trying his best to hide the way the smallest of actions drained him. Though he doubted he was successful. Frank was irritatingly observant. He stood slowly, fighting the imbalance in his ears as he tried to steady himself. His hackles rose when he sensed Frank’s hand held close to him, prepared to steady him if needed. His mind flashing back to the times that strangers’ uninvited guidance had reached out to him, as if he were too disabled and weak to handle something so simple as finding his way around a room unassisted. He could wave away the momentary annoyance easily enough with those that didn’t know him. For them, Matt was exactly as he wanted to be seen – blind, vulnerable, unable to protect himself. It had played to his advantage in the past. Out of the whole of New York, who would expect the blind lawyer to be Daredevil?

This, however, was different. The indignity of his vulnerability in the face of Father Lantom and Maggie had been difficult enough to swallow on its own. Struggling through menial tasks with Frank there to not only bear witness his failure, but also safe keep him with an abnormal undercurrent of care (because this was _Frank Castle _– hulking and furious and even more dangerous when wounded, not level-headed and considerately attentive), was nigh on unbearable. It was for this reason, that Matt decided then and there, that the cosmos had it out for him, as when he took a step forward, a wave of dizziness hit him hard, and his legs buckled beneath him. He braced himself for the fall when it registered that he had nothing to hold onto, hoping that his ribcage would sustain the minimal damage. But then something caught him around the waist – hefting him up and taking the weight off his legs, his body instinctively leaning into its warmth.

The light-headedness passed long enough for him to realise that it was Frank that had wrapped his arms around him, and it was his shoulder that Matt was breathing shallowly into to avoid hurting his ribs further.

“Okay, okay, alright Red. Take it easy.”

Heat rising to his face, Matt squeezed his eyes shut at the nauseating dizziness that stole over his head and pushed himself away from Frank. Frank, who’d already been doubting his ability to walk, and who Matt had just gifted infinitely ammunition to maintain that doubt, didn’t budge.

The closeness was starting to become a little too much. He could write off the fingers gently carding through his hair as Frank simply not wanting to deal with the musk of dirt, blood and death that had stuck to his hair (as unlikely as that explanation seemed in light of Frank’s everyday dealings). Could pretend that while the meticulous, cold calloused hands that checked over his ribcage did illicit little sparks of shock up his spine, the reaction was one of pain, not of touch-starved enjoyment. Because this man was the enemy. Those hands were the same ones that had tortured people, _murdered _people. And just because they’d managed to hit some semblance of peace for the time being, did not mean that Matt could let his guard down. So, if that meant he had to fight the way his body seemed to settle in the man’s presence – much in the same way Foggy’s or Karen’s used to – disregard the confusing, calming effect of the thunderous pulse that overtook his senses, then so be it.

For all his ability to read people, Frank, at the very least, appeared to be completely oblivious to his internal conflict.

“I’m fine, just a little dizzy.” He said, pushing against him again, refusing to disclose that it was any worse than this.

Frank backed off a little at that, grumbling a quiet, “Don’t you pass out on me, y’hear?” Before moving them into a slightly less intimate position; pulling one of Matt’s arm’s over Frank’s shoulder and putting his arm around Matt’s waist.

His ego would’ve liked to claim that with the extra support, Matt was able to walk with Frank up the stairs, but if he were being honest with himself, the reality of it all was closer to Frank dragging him up the bloody things. Matt was too busy trying to get his stupid legs to work as to not rely completely on Frank to hold him up to notice when they’d reached their destination, the family’s presence, and it wasn’t until the room went quiet and a woman – Sarah – gave a little gasp at the sight of them and raced to help him to an open chair that he realised he now had a lot more eyes on him, unmasked and open, than he was comfortable with.

He swallowed his pride (something he’d been doing a lot of lately) and let them guide him down to the seat, occasionally wincing when he moved the wrong way and his abused limbs and bones shrieked in protest and pain. Once he was settled, he murmured a soft thank you that he directed more toward Sarah than Frank, even though he’d done the majority of the grunt work getting Matt up here.

He could still hear Frank’s heartbeat, strongly pulsing as he settled into the seat beside him, but he struggled to place where each of the more unfamiliar bodies were placed in the room. He tried to focus, honing in on their scent, and was hit hard with vertigo when every odour in the area burned at his nostrils all at once. The smell of the meal in front of him; spices emanating from cooked meat, butter melted into potatoes, the sulphur-like quality of the steamed vegetables. The bodily scent unique to each individual around the table. Frank being the most familiar; Kevlar, gunpowder, coffee, denim, the Lieberman household’s soap. The decomposition of garbage in the kitchen a room over that needed taking out. The sickly strong fragrance of diffuser sticks in the living room. Too much. Matt flung a hand to his mouth and swallowed down the bile clawing at his throat. He tried to filter it out. Build a mental wall between the outside world and himself again. Better to be blind than to be passed out on the dinner table.

Suddenly it registered that he hadn’t been reading the room, and there was likely half a dozen set of eyes on him, witnessing his pathetic little episode. Matt tried to calm his frazzled nerves - resorted to breathing through his mouth until everything stopped spinning, waiting until everything went back to a numb, blank static again.

He wet his lips, “Uh… Hi. I’m…”

He paused, feeling naked and exposed without his mask, or his glasses – anything to cover his face. He didn’t know these people beyond their connection to Frank. And to further that point, he was still unsure of how he felt about the incredibly shaky ground that the two of them have been trying to establish some semblance of trust upon.

“I’m Matt.” He said. The name felt foreign on his tongue, even with purposefully leaving out his surname.

He’d settled to forego the identity months ago. Matthew Murdock, the everyday citizen. The lawyer. The friend. The failure. He was a man long dead. Both legally and in his own mind. He was more better off as the Devil, anyway. With the safety and comfortable numbness and that came with isolation, without the burden of Matt’s softness. The little luxuries he’d allowed that had ultimately led to his weakness. Companionship, love, happiness. _Silk sheets. _Stick’s scathing voice resonated in his head.

He startled when Frank discretely nudged his arm, the action hidden by acting as if he had only moved to grab the jug of water in the middle of the table.

Matt cleared his throat, “Thank you for letting Frank and I stay here… And for the meal.”

He kept his head bowed, hoping that his inability to meet their eyes was written off as shyness or as an anxiety factor, rather than a blind one. He missed his fucking glasses. More, now than ever. He didn’t need sight to know that he had the room’s attention, eyes taking in his beaten appearance. Presented in the face of normalcy he felt strangely self-conscious, embarrassed that in the time it’d taken to introduce himself, he’d already had a minor spasm and zoned out in front of the family. Who, speaking of which, likely already thought he was some wacko homeless man that Frank had found beaten half to death in an alley and taken pity on. What with him being obviously exhausted and in pain, with dark rims around his eyes, and swollen bruises covering his face, arms - practically every inch of his body. Not to mention the unshaved stubble sprouting across his jaw and the clothes that clearly couldn’t reasonably belong to him; not with the way they hung off his admittedly malnourished frame.

“No need to thank us, Matt.” Sarah replied gently, “Any friend of Frank’s is a friend of ours.”

Matt inwardly balked. There was a lot of terms he could use to describe his relationship with Frank. Tenuous and rocky at best – linked together by an odd game where one would one-up the other by saving his life for no other reason than begrudging respect. At worst? Antagonistic. Volatile. The two of them ready to lay into each other at the drop of a hat. Either way, the word ‘friend’ sure as hell didn’t make it on the list. Frank hadn’t bothered correcting her though, and Matt didn’t feel he was in any place to do so, so he simply nodded towards his best guess of her position.

As the family settled back into an easy flow of conversation, he felt Frank reach over him and load his own plate with food from where it was set in the middle of the table, before grabbing Matt’s plate before he could protest and doing the same with his. Matt grit his teeth and tried to not feel patronized, content to return back into his position of a strange background figure, listening without contribution.

“Hey Matt?”

Matt jerked to attention, raising his head towards the source of the young girl’s voice, realising belatedly that he’d lost concentration again. Had been simply sitting there in a daze, playing with the food so graciously offered to him.

“Mmhm?” He hummed, moving his fork from where it’d been digging circles in the potato mash to place it beside the plate.

“Why is your face like that?”

Matt froze up, his blood going cold, and David choked on a piece of chicken. His subsequent coughing fit was able to draw the eyes away from Matt, which – thank god – gave him the time necessary for it to register that she was likely referring to his beat-up appearance, and not his sightless gaze. Matt raised a hand to the darkest bruising at his jaw sheepishly before he let it drop, choosing instead to pull up his hoodie a little higher to spare the kids the sight of the collar of red surrounding his neck.

After chasing away the coughing fit by downing some water, David cleared his throat, “Um, Leo, honey – That’s something private Matt doesn’t need to share if he doesn’t want to-”

“It’s alright.” Matt interjected. He chewed the side of his cheek, his mind whirring as he tried to think up of a valid explanation.

“I was in a car accident.”

Zach scoffed, “Like Frank is in car accidents?”

Beside him, Frank went tense as a bowstring, and Matt wondered just how many times he’d used that particular excuse when he couldn’t come up with anything to better to explain the litany of bruises colouring his features. Matt opened his mouth but was silenced when on the other side of the table, Sarah’s fork clattered loudly to her plate as she clasped both her hands together.

“Alright!” She said, an exaggerated falsetto lightening her voice, “New topic! Leo, how’s your soccer team doing?”

Leo was quiet for long enough for Matt to wonder whether she was going to allow them to breeze past the matter, before she swallowed the mouthful of food she’d shovelled into her mouth and shrugged, “Pretty good. We’ve got playoffs soon. I think we might actually have a good chance of making finals this year.”

And just like that, the tension seemed to flow out of Frank’s body, and Matt went back to picking at his food as Leo recounted details of teams’ standings and which of her teammates had been injured and how they should still manage to get through as long as they could pull off the plays they’d been practising.

Frank must’ve been watching him from the corner of his eye, because after a minute or two of the family’s chatter he kicked Matt’s shin under the table with a socked foot. Matt jumped slightly at the contact.

“Quit being a picky shit.” He murmured beneath his breath, so quietly that only Matt would be able to pick up on the low baritone of his voice, “I’m sick of being able to count your ribs through your shirt.”

Matt’s grip around his fork tightened, something within him flaring up at the comment. He was distantly aware that there was no bite to the words, and this was probably Frank trying his best to be considerate, but to Matt’s stubborn mind, Frank had long ago careened away from kindness and plummeted into thick condensation.

He wasn’t a child. He was vaguely aware of his own weight loss after Elektra’s death. It wasn’t like he could check himself out in the mirror, or read the numbers on a scale, but he could feel the deepening prominence of his bones jutting out from his skin. Still. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a proper meal. The pang of hunger lost to the sea of a hundred thousand more pressing thoughts, emotions, and pains. For someone with tastebuds as enhanced as his was, Matt was far from a fussy eater.

If only to prove this to Frank, Matt stabbed at an oversized piece of broccoli, shoved it into his mouth and began to chew obnoxiously, hoping that it would irk the man the same way it did when Matt was forced to listen to someone who didn’t know how to eat with their goddamn mouth closed.

Frank snorted lightly, but didn’t say anything else, seemingly appeased for now. Matt, who’d been trying to play contrarian, deflated at the lacklustre response. _God, he was in need of a good fight. _Though it didn’t stop him from spending the remainder of the dinner attempting to shove the rest of the food on his plate down his gullet. He was going to need it if he wanted to recover, and he made a note to ask Frank for a few protein bars the next time he went for a supply run.

\--------------------------------------------------

The moment he could stand, Red took his capability to have two legs barely hold him up as a capability to fight.

Frank could’ve anticipated as much, but something was off about his demeanour. Although he had never been quite as panicked as the first night he’d waken in a disorientated state, Red had maintained an edge about him since day one. It reminded Frank of some of the men he saw in Curtis’ meetings – twitchy, unable to sit still or sleep interrupted by some form of nightmare. They didn’t talk about it. Frank didn’t know a lot about Red, but he knew enough to understand that something had changed. That Red had never been this bad.

He had hoped that the kid would stay low for a week or two. Give Frank a moment to draw out his plan of attack, but unfortunately, this was Red he was talking about. Frank could cope with the push-ups and sit ups and lifting whatever he could get his hands on that was heaviest. It was probably good for the kid. He needed the outlet for all that pent-up, agitated energy. But Frank knew he had a problem when he came downstairs one day to find Red aggressively laying into the coffee table that he’d come up with the ingenious idea to convert into a make-shift punching bag by duct-taping the couch’s cushions around it and leaning it against the wall.

It was ridiculous. And idiotic. And probably the exact same thing Frank would do if the situation was in reverse. But that didn’t mean he was going to let Red go out and get himself killed after all the hard work he’d put in to negate that outcome.

Which was why he may have panicked, just a little, when he went down one night to find that Red had disappeared, because it was becoming pretty fucking clear that the obstinate fucker was more concerned with throwing himself into vigorous physical exercise than recovering.

Frank climbed back up the stairs, hoping that Red wasn’t jumping out of a window or something just as stupid as that for the sake of putting up the metaphorical middle finger to all Frank’s efforts.

He stopped short when he found him in the living room, back ramrod straight and fists clenched. Red, who had already been looking washed-out, was so pale that he seemed grey, his jaw set in an expression of rage that would’ve been reminiscent of the devil during his glory days if he wasn’t snug under clothes too large for him and looking as if he’d topple from a stiff breeze. As it was, it seemed more of a pout.

Frank looked to the television. He’d missed half the report, but the underlining headline blaring ‘Daredevil: wanted for murder; police on the hunt’, was a clear enough indicator of what had Red so worked up. Frank had seldom hated anything as much as the fake smiles and coiffed hair of the news anchors; prattling on as if there wasn’t corruption going on right under their noses and they weren’t inadvertently cursing out the one lone, half-dead idiot trying to fight all of it.

He watched from the corner of his eye as Red, one hand clutched firmly around his ribcage, proceeded to stumble towards the TV, using his free hand to feel his way toward it.

“You need something?” He asked, voice gruff.

Red startled and tensed, his sightless gaze snapping towards him. Frank was almost amused. It was rare for him to sneak up on the devil. He wasn’t used to Red being so out of it, that he didn’t even seem to recognize or register that he was here. Red was usually better attuned than this. But the sobering reality was that his ability to remain undetected in Red’s presence spoke volumes to how out of shape the kid really was.

“Your ears alright there, Red?”

Teeth gritted, mouth a hard, thin line, Red stooped to the television and silenced the mindless chatter. Frank stomach dropped when Red’s hand pressed against his side dropped, revealing a dark patch of blood staining his clothes.

“Christ, _pain in my ass_ \- can you go five minutes without undoing my hard work?” He groaned, taking a step closer to try and determine where Red had ripped his stitches.

He was about to pull up his hoodie to check his midsection when Red pulled away and headed for the front door.

“Hey! Where d’you think you’re going?”

Red didn’t stop, barely reacted at all beyond saying quietly, “I need some fresh air.”

_Angsty bastard_.

Frank frowned, returning to his bag to retrieve some equipment before he joined Red where he sat on the front porch, brooding.

“You done being dramatic yet?”

“Fuck you.” Matt said, though his heart wasn’t really in it.

“Imma take that as a yes.” He replied, plopping himself down next to Red and reaching for the fabric covering his midsection.

Red flung out an arm and took grip of his wrist before he could pull the hoodie up, and Frank stilled. He frowned and was looking from Red’s hand to his face when Red simply let go. Frank released his hold on him as well. Wondered what the hell that just was, and whether he should continue. Frank couldn’t really read him right now. Unsettling. The kid was usually an open book.

Frank was about to ask what the hell his problem was when Red lifted up the hoodie himself, exposing the mess of pulled stitches at his side, bleeding sluggishly. Frank’s brow furrowed, though he went ahead and examined the pulled stitches, avoiding contact with him again, wary of his reaction. The cut had reopened, but other than the blood, it was only a little red – no pus or swelling or anything that would indicate that it was infected.

He shook his head, taking out the first aid kit. He set to work removing the broken sutures, Red wincing occasionally as the thread pulled at his skin. Frank then poured some disinfectant over a cloth and dabbed at the wound, which caused him to hiss and writhe on the spot, muscular abdomen shuddering.

Frank’s gaze was stuck on that movement for some reason. He pulled his eyes away before he could give it any thought. Gave the kid a moment to compose himself before grabbing some clean stitches.

“You need to slow down, Red.” He said, aiming to pull his attention away from the pain with conversation.

“Can’t.” Red winced as Frank pushed the needle through, thread pulling at his sensitive skin, “Don’t have a choice. This guy… He’s faster and more skilled than anyone I’ve ever seen, and I wasn’t prepared. Was too weak to stop him. I’m not making that mistake again.”

Frank looked up for a moment, examined the anger and determination set in his expression, and wondered if the kid had finally gotten the point. Superheroing was a very reactionary field. Red had to wait for someone to do something before he could stop them doing it, which ceded initial control of the encounter so often that it became habit. Frank knew better. You want peace, you prepare for war. Control the ground and you control the fight. Make them come to you, or, if you have no other choice, you hit them where they’re most vulnerable. That’s how you win. Not Red’s dumb vigilante bullshit.

Red was already in a mood, so Frank refrained from talking about their night jobs. Focused instead on finishing up.

“So, what’s the plan?” He asked, trying off the stitch.

Matt pulled his hoodie back down, hiding away the wound and protecting his exposed midsection from the cold.

“I’m going to end it.”

Frank’s eyebrows hit his hairline.

“What?” He asked, needing the clarification – to know if Red was saying what Frank thought he was saying.

Red didn’t hesitate, “I’m going to kill Fisk.”

_Well, shit. _

He sounded serious too. Like he believed the words that Frank never thought he’d hear come from Red’s mouth. Fucking Christ, he remembered the last time they’d had this conversation on the docks. When Red was a stuttering, conflicted mess, touching his forehead and crossing himself at the mere suggestion of murder. All maybes and ‘just this once’. So this… It was something.

If Frank knew anything about Red, it was his stubborn adherence to his own rigid worldview. Defending the innocent masses as a lawyer by day, crime-fighting hero of Hell’s Kitchen by night. His refusal to compromise for anything less than what he construed as “good”, even when the two lives directly contradicted each other. It was unrealistic. If Red’s absence at his own trial hasn’t been evidence enough, the fact that he’d had to give up practising altogether proved to Frank that the balance was impossible. Somehow though, he couldn’t imagine the kid ridding his dual natures, accepting anything that fell outside of his own boundaries.

“Look, I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it. I want that shit-stain dead just as much as you do. But that’s…”

He grasped for the proper words. Could hardly believe that it was him – Frank Castle, the Punisher – that was the only person left to convince _Daredevil_ – Mr. ‘there is goodness in these fucking scumbags trust me’, not to murder someone.

“That ain’t you, Red. You’re… You let out the darkness, that violent rage you feel, deep inside…”

Frank knew it was there, had seen brief glimpses of it himself. He knew that on some level, he and Red were two sides of the same coin. But _fuck_, Red, at his core was so unapologetically good. Frank had never seen anything quite like it. And it hurt like hell to see even the possibility of himself mirrored in the kid. He’d tried chaining him up, forcing him to feel what it was to be the Punisher. And the kid had broken. They were supposed to be at opposing ends of the spectrum. Daredevil and the Punisher were fundamentally incompatible, caught in a philosophical deadlock, and Frank wouldn’t have it any other way.

“You leave the killing to me.”


	10. Chapter 10

Frank couldn’t sleep. He laid prone on the living room couch and stared at the ceiling, mind churning away like a runaway motor. Insomnia was a familiar nightly occurrence for Frank, something incorporated into his sleep schedule even before his family was killed. For the first time in a long time, his thoughts weren’t plagued by their faces, but Reds’. He’d never thought of each other as outright enemies, but the concept of them being allies had never really been valid until now. And Frank found that he was uncomfortable with the idea. The cost of Red sacrificing his ideals was too high. Because that wasn’t Daredevil. He didn’t know what their relationship was when Red didn’t go around letting Frank kill scumbags, and him no longer having to stop the kid from getting in his way.

He sighed and rolled to his side, looking to the digital clock flashing from the DVD player beneath the television. Six hours until dawn. Six hours of lying there with nothing but the darkness of the winter night and his troubling thoughts.

The thing was, Frank was certain it wouldn’t even be the first time Red killed someone. He’d seen a couple of his battles – felt just how hard he could hit. He’d never been able to fully wrap his head around the kid’s philosophy. Frank had served with Catholics that didn’t have a conscientious objection to being in the military. Believed that by being actively employed by the government to protect their country gave them a valid reason to kill that they themselves would otherwise be unable possess in civilian life. Though he didn’t have much confidence in the idea of Red viewing vigilantism in the same way. For another thing, there was a pretty sizeable difference between self-defense, manslaughter, and premediated murder. Even Frank recognised that. Perhaps he didn’t see it so much as a licence to kill so much as it was obstruction of justice. The kid was a law graduate, and just because Frank had zero faith in the bullshit the U.S. legal system pushed doesn’t mean he couldn’t see how Red could’ve justified his actions in the past.

He eyed the digital clock again.

Five hours, fifty-nine minutes until dawn.

Fucking hell.

He shifted again, his finger tapping agitatedly against his side. He breathed in, and out. One breath, two breaths, three breaths, then violently ripped away the covers warming him and stood up.

His feet were taking him towards the basement before he’d made a conscious decision of where to go. Red hadn’t responded to him on the porch. Returned to silence after he’d told the kid to leave the morally grey area to him. Withdrew into himself and cut the tenuous connection they’d managed to form. Frank wanted this resolved. Needed an answer.

His heart dropped to his stomach when Red was absent from his usual position on the basement couch and dropped further still when he couldn’t find him after a brief skim of the rest of the room. He closed his eyes for a moment and clenched his fists, trying to calm the heartbeat hammering against his chest. This was fine. Micro was paranoid. Rightly so. But it meant that he had the most obvious entryways closely monitored by security cameras and proximity alarms. Which meant that it was likely that Red was still in the house somewhere.

Frank rushed back up the stairs and almost flew straight past the kitchen when he caught a dark silhouette in the corner of his eye. He took hold of the entryway and skidded to a halt, stopping dead in his tracks. There, towards the back of the room was Red, halfway through sliding open the windowpane. Clad in his stitched together suit and a stupid black scarf wrapped around his head. His billy clubs sitting innocently on the counter beside him.

Red paused and lifted his head, canting it to one side like a bewildered dog.

“Shit.”

He moved for the window, and Frank was there in an instant, grabbing him by the wrist and twisting him around so that Frank was barring the way.

“This is my decision to make, not yours.” Red muttered, pushing ineffectually at Frank’s shoulder.

“You know what, Red. I’m really starting to wonder why I bothered pulling you out of the ground when all you’re going to do is go out to play hero for a night and get yourself killed again.”

Red shook his head, “Get myself killed. That’s rich, coming from you.”

Frank narrowed his eyes. Their ‘fights’ had been relatively elementary up until this point. Red never pushing too far as to truly start something he was in no place to finish, and Frank capable of dismissing Red’s snootiness and general curtness as an instinctual response to being in pain and exposed in an unfamiliar environment. He should’ve known this was bound to change the moment Red felt he wasn’t on death’s door.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This one-man firing squad act - it isn’t to save anyone, isn’t about making the world a better place. I’d say that you do what you do because all that’s left in that hollow shell of yours is rage and hate, but it’s not even an emotional response anymore, is it? Stopped being revenge the moment you killed the last of those that murdered your family. All it is now is a drawn-out suicide-“

Red’s trying to divert the topic. Purposefully rile him up. Frank knew this. But even so, he felt it, from the very bottom of his feet. The righteous indignation shoots up into his being and fills him, and he has to chuckle. Though it didn’t sound like he was amused, and it certainly didn’t sound like he was having fun. It sounded dangerous.

“What’s your excuse then? Some mobster gets in one good attempt at torturing you and suddenly you’re all in for murder.”

Red continued, the two of them talking but neither of them refusing to listen.

“You think by losing your family, you’ve lost everything-“

“Don’t you talk about them-” He growled, hackles rising.

“- But you’ve turned away every olive-branch, _every _well-meaning gesture of help anyone’s offered to you. You push away anyone that gets too close. You could have a life, but you’d rather be the Punisher.”

Frank rolled his eyes, blown away by the bone-deep hypocrisy of it all – lectured by the very man that seemed insistent on suffering. The same man that had effectively allowed the world to think him dead, as long as he got to continue on like Hell’s Kitchen’s very own ghost.

“That’s a pretty thick slice of bullshit pie you’re trying to serve, Doctor. Do I want to kill myself, or do I want to be the Punisher? Don’t think I can manage both at the same time.”

Red snapped back just as quickly, “I think you want to die, Frank, as long as it means you can take as many people you believe deserve it down with you.”

He took a moment to process that, more uncomfortable with the fact that it was coming from Red’s own mouth than whether it resonated true within him or not. By letting the words digest for so long, he was already giving the little shit ideas, allowing him to think he was getting into his head. Frank needed to put a stop to that asap.

“And how about you, Red? I’m supposed to take this coming from the guy the world believes is already dead - who’s been shot in the head, had a building collapsed on him - been _buried alive_. And that’s only the things I know about. So, let me ask you somethin’, who’s track record do you think is better?”

Matt came a little closer, his voice lowering to a hiss, “Yeah, sometimes when I interfered, I got hurt, or other people got hurt – sometimes even died. But I also know that by doing so I’ve saved a hell of a lot more than I’ve lost. Can you say the same?”

Frank doesn’t know how a man without sight is capable of meeting his eyes so strongly, his gaze turned cold and hard. Brows furrowed, Frank closed the space between them, chest to chest, so close that Red had to tilt his head up slightly to have his sightless eyes continue to bore into him.

“Lemme tell you something, Red.” He murmured, matching the quietness of Red’s voice, tone low and dangerous, “You’re a child. Naïve. Insecure. Trying to force a black-and-white morality on a grey world. Having a goddamn temper tantrum in the form of horns and red tights every time things don’t go your way. Matt Murdock makes up his mind about something and you better fucking hope that the universe follows suit, because God knows he thinks it revolves around him. A half-baked piece of shit too weak to even follow his own code. It’s pathetic.”

Frank turned his head and spat on the ground, ridding the foul taste from his mouth, and Red tensed. Could’ve reacted to the sound of his own name, since it was the first time Frank can recall ever saying it to him, but he liked to think it was more due to the fact he was just read for filth.

“You can talk big game from your way up there in the clouds on your high horse, but at the end of the day, if it weren’t for me, you’d still be six feet under.”

Red sized him up, and for a moment, Frank thought they were finally going to go another round. God knows they both needed a good fight. Something to release the tension that’d been building between them ever since Frank had dug him up. Even with Red the way he was. Maybe a knock to the head would set him straight again. Put things back to the way they used to be.

To his disappointment, Red backed down, choosing instead to shoulder past Frank and move back into the kitchen. He was near taken aback by the level of frustration that creeped under his skin when he sensed the riled spirit drain out of Red from sheer long-delayed fatigue. Frank had hoped that the words would’ve hit him right at the weakest points of that ever-present armour he wore, releasing the hurt and pain and anger that he had accidently caged in under his protective shell. But his reaction wasn’t one of despondency, or objection. It seemed more like… acknowledgement. Resentful agreement. And that only made Frank’s blood boil hotter.

“Where’d that fighting spirit in you go, Murdock?” He continued to let the name slip from his lips, if only because he knows it’ll make the man more livid.

“You’re a lot of things, but I never took you for a coward.”

And for a moment, Frank believed it with a vehemence. He realised within a moment that his anger didn’t stem from him having an issue with Red killing, but the drive behind it. Red was taking the coward’s way out. Because self-destruction was easier than sticking to what he believed and dealing with the consequences. A coward would sacrifice anything to save their physical self, even at the price of moral and emotional death, willing to become a monster, to let the broken shards of their being go on where their true self once did.

“Y’know what I think?” He asked to Red’s back, answering his own question when he didn’t rise to the rhetoric, “I’m thinking maybe you lost somethin’ in that grave.”

Frank wasn’t sure himself what exactly that something was, whether it be his morals, his will, hope. Red ignored Frank in lieu of taking a glass from where it was drying beside the sank and filling it with water from the tap.

“Nah, that’s too recent. It was gone long before that…”

Red raised the glass to his lips and took a long, drawn-out sip, before calmly setting it aside on the counter. His only tell a trembling hand gripped tightly at his side.

“Maybe you left it, buried and abandoned under that building along with your girl.”

It wasn’t an entirely innocuous comment, and while he was aware that he was pulling at Red’s weak points like a kid trying to see how far they could stretch an elastic band, it wasn’t the crack that Frank had expected to burst open the dam of pent-up rage within Matt. Which was why he was altogether unprepared when Red snapped.

Frank hardly had hardly a moment to blink before the air was punched from his lungs as a solid weight rammed into him. He hit the ground, dazed for a few moments, unsure of which way was up or down. Once the shock wore off, he quickly became aware of the weight settled on his chest. Frank narrowly avoided a fist flying for his head, his instincts kicking in at the last minute as he bucked his hips roughly, causing Red to fall forward and loosen his hold on him.

Red had lost a lot of mass. He was slower, weaker, hurting. But even then, he was still an exceptional fighter. Could probably kick Frank’s ass if he were healthy. Frank was a brawler, not a martial artist, and while he could meet Red’s power and precision, he’d never been able to replicate the grace and composure that Red held himself with.

Frank managed to bodily throw Red off him, and they scrabbled to their feet. Fortunately for Frank, as they begun truly fighting, he learned quickly that a lot had changed in the past year. Red relied more on punches and boxing rather than the ninja kicks and acrobatic flips that Frank remembered from their first meeting. Blows that were once lightning fast now sluggish and uncoordinated.

They sparred, trading some good hits here and there, and Frank couldn’t help but grin at the familiarity of it. At one point, his knuckles caught Red across the mouth, splitting his lip, and snapping his head back. Frank hesitated for a second, and Red returned the favour by clocking him across the face. Not as hard as what he could usually manage, but his left jaw throbbed impressively all the same. In response, Frank let out a low roar and charged. He tackled Red below the waist - took him off his feet and into the nearest wall.

The impact sent a shockwave down his body and left an impressive dent in the wall as the plaster cracked beneath their weight. A picture frame nailed to the wall dropped beside them, the glass shattering across the kitchen floor. Red groaned weakly. Frank took a step back, taking care to avoid the glass at his feet, and breathed, ignoring the way his body shook, adrenalin thrumming strong through his bloodstream.

Red moved from where he was sprawled across the ground, gasping like a landed fish. He rolled over to push himself to his hands and knees and heaved in air, a horrible wheezing sound coming from his lungs with every breath. Blood dripped from a newly split lip. Frank just hoped that he hadn’t torn any stitches. Red spat, drawing a sleeve to wipe his mouth.

“That it? This really the best you can do?” Frank goaded, “Gotta say, I’m disappointed. You’re in worse shape than I thought.”

Red arm flailed until he found the dented wall behind him, bits of plaster falling from where they stuck to his clothes as he pushed himself upwards, his hands leaving behind a path of bloody smears. From there, he staggered over to the kitchen counter and slumped over it, his back facing Frank.

Frank advanced toward him, prepared to get him back on his feet and back downstairs where he could lick his wounds in peace and pretend that he didn’t just have his ass handed to him. The fight was over. Any wise man would know that the best course of action here would be to stay down.

Frank perhaps made a severe lapse in judgement here.

Red wasn’t wise.

In fact, more often than not, he leaned towards the ‘dumb motherfucker’ side of the spectrum. Too goddamn stubborn to know what was good for him. And while he may have been lacking his usual finesse, he more than made up for that by being physically incapable of tapping out.

The moment he reached out a hand to Red’s shoulder, the kid spun around and cracked Frank across the jaw with one of his billy clubs.

_Shit. _

He’d forgotten about those. Red’s movement hadn’t been random. It was an act. A strategy to take Frank off guard.

White spots sprung into his vision and he stumbled backwards, momentarily stunned by the hit.

The next time the kid lunged out at him though, Frank was ready. He dodged and countered the attacks, using whatever was closest to parry the hits. The vase in the middle of the counter was too fragile, shattering and showering their feet with water and flowers when Frank tried to use it to block Red’s swing, and the ornate salad bowl he grabbed next didn’t fare much better. Oddly enough, the best he could manage to get his hands on between evading and taking the blunt blows was a large wooden saltshaker.

He knew, instinctively, that he wasn’t going to be able to keep this up and was going to have to play dirty himself if he wanted stay on even terms. Plan in mind, he allowed Red some ground, forcing the fight back towards the family kitchen table, and Frank waited until he was within an arm’s reach of it, before he latched onto an opening and went low, kicking out one of Red’s legs from beneath him.

Red staggered, and Frank used the time it took for him to rebalance his stance to dive beneath the table and snatch one of the handguns he had hidden there, attached to the underside of the wooden surface. Red grabbed his boot, yanked him back into the open, then jammed one of his batons to his larynx as Frank flicked off the gun’s safety and pressed it to Red’s head.

They both froze. Still as statues.

Red wet his lips, and Frank followed the movement, blood rushing past his ears.

“Seems we’ve reached a stalemate.”

“Really?” Frank asked, sardonic bite turned up to eleven, “Because it seems to me you’ve got one of your stupid sticks up against my throat while I’ve got a gun to your head.”

“You’re not going to pull the trigger.”

Frank considered it, some vindictive side of him wanting to just to prove the kid wrong. He looked to where the dumb scarf hid away Red’s eyes.

“Don’t be so sure about that, choir boy.”

At that, whippet-fast, he readjusted his aim and released a shot right next to Red’s good ear. Red reacted exactly as Frank had hoped to the deafening sound, dropping the batons and pressing his palms over his ears. He reeled away, needing to place a hand to the floor to stabilize himself.

Frank stood and kicked the billy clubs to the far side of the room, thinking it over for a moment before he discarded the gun along with them.

Red groaned, using the handles of the kitchen cabinet to pull himself up and staggering when they pulled out unexpectedly and cutlery spilled onto the floor.

“Need a hand there?” Frank asked, his tone dancing the line between amusement and sarcastic impatience.

“Give me a sec.” He muttered.

Frank nodded. Fair enough.

Red, ever so slowly, pushed himself back to his feet, shook off the dust clinging to him, and the moment his stance was steady again, his fists were back up. Frank rose an eyebrow. Ding, ding, ding. Round three.

Frank altered his approach - backed away, quietened his breaths, lightened his steps. Tried to really gauge the kid’s inability to see. How fucked his hearing had really become, especially after that gunshot. At the very least, if he wanted to leave, he was going to prove to Frank that he wasn’t going to get himself murdered on his very first fight.

Red looked unsure of himself, mouth downturned in confusion at Frank’s sudden passiveness. His head twitched toward him when he accidentally kicked a shard of broken glass, and he lunged out, Frank easily dodging the punch. They went on like this, Red becoming more and more frustrated and embarrassed with each missed hit. He swung his arm, the arc far too wide, close enough to the countertop that it took out a bunch of drying plates and glassware, adding to the clutter of smashed kitchenware on the floor. Red flinched at the sound, and Frank finally took mercy on him, attacking without hesitation.

Frank went in hard, attacking points he knows Red can’t protect due to his injuries and using Red’s own anger and clumsy momentum against him. Frank dropped his shoulder and shifted his weight to one side, clearly choreographing the action and allowing Red time to prepare accordingly. At the last moment, Frank changed tactics, launching a shovelled hook into his exposed side.

Red gasped, falling to one knee and wrapping a hand around his ribs, breaths coming out uneven and shallow.

“Come on, Red.” He said, backing away and flexing his aching knuckles.

Red tilted his head up at Frank, his grip tightening around the fabric of his sweatpants.

“Where’s the other guy? Come on!” He growled, “I’m tired of beating on this broken blind cripple. I want to fight _him_.”

Frank could sense the change in the air. For a moment, there was nothing. Just Red’s harsh panting as he tried to breath around the pain in his lungs. But then, his breaths slowed, hand falling away from where it was bracing his ribs as something within the kid went blank.

Red rose to his feet, started slowly toward him, hands at his sides like he feared nothing. Frank was no stranger to the sensation, fighting on with cracked ribs or healing concussions – the swell of adrenalin that drove away the pain, the cold rush of concentrated resolve through his blood. Matt Murdock faded into the back seat, and something else took control.

_There he is._

The devil came at him with a ferocity that was unmatched, with enough speed and force behind his assault that Frank didn’t have a chance in hell of defending himself. He reeled back, and the devil was on him before he could recover. Didn’t offer him a single chance to breathe - forced him into a corner and kept him there. Frank knew instantly that his skin was going to be marred with bruises that would take weeks to heal. He tried fighting back with carefully placed jabs and elbows, but Red hardly reacted. His hits blindingly fast and powerful, taking full advantage of Frank’s unwillingness to attack his weak points.

It was as if he no longer felt pain, his fears pushed to the back of his mind and his senses subsequently returned, back to knowing exactly where Frank was no matter how quiet he thought he was being, anticipating his hits before it had even registered to Frank himself where he was aiming the strike. He was able to keep up, if only because the devil was used to fighting goons that were unaware of his enhanced senses, and Frank was smart enough to not act on a not-opportunity of a sucker punch when it seemed like Red wasn’t looking his way. Frank went down however when Red caught him across the brow, bits of glassware cutting into his skin as he collided with the floor. He grunted and reached for the pulsating pain at his forehead, his hand coming away bloody.

He shuffled backwards when Red kept coming toward him, his focus sharpening.

Frank wasn’t intimidated. Nope. Murdock was a dork. A dumbass with broken ribs and weirdly soft hair and who couldn’t see how dumb he looked with a stupid scarf wrapped around his head. This was fine. Red’s frenzied state was not unrelenting. He was a candle burning from both ends. The devil could only take him so far.

He glanced toward the refrigerator next to him and flung the door outwards into Red’s face. He staggered, and Frank used the half an inch of space to blindly grab something from the fridge – which happened to be a half-eaten tub of yoghurt – and throw it at the kid. Red recoiled as the yoghurt splattered across his face and down his chest, stark white against his dark clothing. Frank moved – catching him around the waist. If he could take the fight to the ground, he could throw his weight around; keep Red from hurting himself or Frank too badly.

That planned turned out flawed when they grappled on the ground, glass cutting into their back. Red managed to lock his legs around him, his strong thighs hindering Frank’s movement and securing him to the floor. Red managed to get an arm up against his windpipe, blocking his airway.

He thrust upwards, trying to force Red off him, but he held strong. He couldn’t breathe, vision greying at the sides. He shoved weakly at him, smacking at Red’s back. He could feel his consciousness slipping when Red backed off at the last minute, his forearm leaving his throat and allowing Frank to take in great gulps of air.

The devil faded out of him, leaving Red slumped on top of him, head buried into the crook of his shoulder, the burning pain no doubt returning to his ribcage in waves. Little shit probably tore some stitches too.

“You got that out of your system?” Frank asked, his throat low and raspy from abuse.

“You’re an asshole.” Red mumbled into him.

Frank chuckled, wincing when the movement jostled all the most sensitive points of his body.

“Mm, so I hear.”

They stayed like that, every muscle in their bodies aching, heads spinning, when suddenly Red went unnaturally still - tense, and unbreathing above him.

Frank blinked away at the blood that had dripped down his brow and begun to coagulate at his lashes, then looked up to find David, stock-still at the doorway. Staring from Frank and Red tangled on the floor, bloody and bruised, yoghurt smeared between them, to the fallout of the bomb that had gone off in his kitchen – the massive Matt-shaped dent in the wall, open cupboards and knocked over furniture, the broken glass, flowers, cutlery and plaster scattered across the floor, the bullet hole in one of the walls.

“What. And I cannot stress this enough. _The fuck?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one of the most entertaining chapters to write and I’m a little sad it’s over.
> 
> Also, I'm Australian. Yoghurt is spelled like that. So is favour. And colour. I don't make the rules.


	11. Chapter 11

“I thought there were people here to kill us!” David exclaimed, the shock not having quite worn off yet.

He watched as Matt untangled himself from Frank and rolled off him, resting his back against the counter. Even with the scarf – _David’s scarf, what the hell _– wrapped around his head, Matt looked tired and beaten. Or, at least more tired and beaten than he usually looked. Tired and beaten seemed to be a default state for that guy. He at least had the decency to look ashamed for massacring David’s kitchen and waking the whole house in the midst of doing so.

Frank, unlike Matt, was able to climb to his feet, and though he appeared just as bruised and battered, he seemed more embarrassed than he did remorseful.

“Dad?” Leo’s voice called from the stairwell, small and scared.

David’s heart clenched, and he felt a new wave of anger wash over him as he directed a glare toward Frank and Matt.

“Everything’s fine, Leo.” He replied, shoving down the emotion so he could sound reassuring.

“You can let mum and Zach know they can go back to sleep.”

“… Okay.” There was a pause, before the quiet voice asked, very hesitantly, “Is Frank hurt?”

Beside him, Frank’s eyes fell closed and he grimaced. If he wasn’t so pissed, David would have laughed at the reaction. There were very few things capable of provoking such an expression of guilt from Frank.

“Everything’s A-Okay down here, sweetheart,” Frank called, “You can go back to bed.”

David waited a couple of seconds for Leo to return upstairs, using the time to flick on the lights, illuminating the true extent of the room’s destruction.

Frank let out a low whistle.

“Hooh boy… Okay. Yeah, this place is a mess.” He remarked, scratching the back of his head.

David shot him a glare.

Frank acknowledged the look by finally apologising, “I’m sorry. I admit, things got a little more heated than expected-“

“A _little_?” He squawked, voice rising at least three octaves as he gestured wildly to the bullet hole in the closest wall.

“I… I can pay for this Mr. Lieberman-”

David’s head swivelled around to Matt, who he’d momentarily forgotten was still here. David couldn’t really bring himself to feel bad about that. As far as he was concerned, the guy was complicit in all this, and he looked to be three seconds away from leaving the conscious plane anyway.

“With what?” Frank asked bluntly, “Don’t know if you remember this Lawyer boy, but legally you’re a dead man. And last I checked, that means all your accounts should be long closed.”

David blinked a couple of times.

“Lawyer?” He repeated, because sadly enough he found that more difficult to believe than Matt being seen as dead. In fact, now that he thought about it, being seen as dead by the rest of the world at one stage might be the only thing that all three men in the room shared in common.

Matt tried using the counter to pull himself up, and Frank was at his side in an instant, keeping him up when he staggered. David rose an eyebrow at the display.

“Alright, time-out.” Frank said, “You're getting yourself cleaned up. I'll fix this mess.”

“I can-“

“You can shut up and go. Christ, already caused enough chaos in here.”

David stared at Frank, blown away by his ability to mouth off as if he hadn’t been one of the two only players that had taken part in the crime scene that was his kitchen.

Surprisingly, Matt didn’t argue any further, though it was clear that he obviously wasn’t happy about it, his mouth turning downward. David watched him as he pulled away from Frank and made his way down the hallway, using the wall for balance.

Frank turned to him, “You got a broom?”

Between the two of them, Frank and David were able to sweep up the clutter littered across the floor fairly speedily. They accumulated the shards of ceramics and glass into piles before they carefully pulled out the silverware and surviving flowers, chucking the former into the sink. David sent another glare at Frank when he realised the vase that the latter belonged to was just another object that was now in pieces at his feet.

Frank rubbed at his jaw sheepishly, drawing David’s eye to the colourful bruising there. It wasn’t the only injury that Frank seemed to be ignoring, judging by the blood that ran freely from the cut at his brow and the way he winced whenever he bent down.

“He got you pretty good, huh? You sure you’re okay?”

“Argh,” Frank waved a dismissive hand, like it was something to pay no mind to, “I’m more glad to have the physical evidence that the kid still has the scrap in him.”

David rolled his eyes.

“More like glad to have the kid on top of you.” He muttered under his breath, too quietly for Frank to pick up.

“What?”

“What?” David echoed, eyebrows raised and eyes wide as he plastered on his best expression of innocence.

Frank eyed him dubiously, before returning to the dustpan and sweeping up the clutter spread across the floor.

Frank wasn’t an expressive guy. At least not verbally. David’s come to terms with that much. But unlike this Matt guy – if that was even his name – he wasn’t blind. He observed the way in which he stood protectively in front of him, notices how he kept a constant gaze over him, unsettled whenever he wasn’t in his line of sight. Frank had spent the past couple of days arguing with Red more than he generally talked to anyone, even the few people he liked, and that right there was enough of an investment in itself.

He couldn’t really blame Frank. Matt was _super well put together_ for a half-dead, blind vigilante. Though, David doesn’t know how Frank would feel about the accusation. He was well aware after all of the rigidly repressed attitude most guys in the military tended to have toward sexuality, and he didn’t really want to risk the possible kiss with a fist that came with testing those boundaries with Frank.

“It's just… What is this?”

Frank huffed, “Said I was sorry, alright?”

“No, I mean, this… this thing, with you and - and him.”

Frank stopped, then lifted his head to give him a raised eyebrow.

“I mean, on one hand it’s like you two want to murder each other-” He gesticulated toward the dent in the wall.

“-But if that were true one of you would be long dead already… And on the other hand-“

David thought back to the way Frank's presence had calmed the man's panic attack. The times he'd walked in on Frank tending to him, how the scene had felt strangely intimate, as if he were intruding on some private moment meant just for them. Which happened to be the exact same way he had felt a couple of minutes earlier when he'd found them collapsed atop of each other after the two animals had destroyed his kitchen.

Merely the nickname spoke volumes. _Red_. As far as David knew, it could’ve started out as a disparaging name, intended to mock or ridicule the guy. Now, though, it seemed more like a term of endearment. Something shared only between Matt and Frank.

“What?” Frank’s voice broke through his thoughts, and David jumped.

“Nothing… forget about it, it's stupid.”

Frank frowned, his eyes narrowing. “No, tell me. I want to know.”

Oh. Oh no. He had his attention now. Oh god.

“Wha- haha, uh…” He floundered, “I… I just don't remember you ever treating me with as much patience and uh….”

He wilted a little under Frank's icy, penetrating gaze.

“Courtesy…?”

_Sure, let’s go with that_

“As you do with this guy.” He finished, hoping desperately that Frank would pick up on his implied meaning in all that, because he sure as hell wasn’t going to be able to say what he truly thought without the safety net of ambiguity when he was still within punchable distance of Frank.

“You weren't buried alive after being tortured by a mobster.” Frank pointed out dryly.

It was at this moment, David was reminded that when all was said and done, Frank really wasn’t all that smart. A tactical genius, sure. He was good at reading people. Good at planning. Good at killing. Knew how to predict his opponents’ actions and map out multiple contingences. But when it came to social situations – the everyday stuff - he was altogether too direct. Lacked the tact to be anything close to quick-witted or charismatic.

Frank could pick out the slightest twitch of a finger, the briefest flick of the eyes that indicated someone might be going for their gun. But he was hopeless when faced with the indirect, subtle social cues that came with flirting.

It was why it had been fairly easy for David to forgive Frank for what had happened between him and Sarah. Because he was a clueless moron who hadn’t recognised the vibes she’d been giving off, and who also didn’t realise how his actions had only encouraged the façade of mutual attraction.

David’s lips thinned and he nodded.

“You have me there.”

Frank gave him the look. The _you’re being weird, and I don’t know what to make of it so I’m just going to ignore it _look. Which sounded a little too long-winded to emulate with a glimpse, but David nonetheless was able to identify immediately.

They went back to disposing the rest of the glass – David grimacing whenever he came across a smear of blood across a timber floor that he’d cleaned less than two days ago. He paused when he came across a clear wad of liquid between all the glass and blood.

“Wha- _what is this_? Why is my floor wet?”

Frank glanced over his shoulder.

“That’s mine. I got it.” He said, before he pulled his sleeve over a hand and rubbed at the patch, spreading the clump of what David now realised was _saliva _across the floor and dampening the fabric at his wrist.

“God, _why_?” He whined, “Why do you have to be disgusting?”

“Quit acting like a child. It’s spit. Ain’t like I left a corpse in the kitchen.”

“No, the corpse is cleaning himself up in my bathroom.”

“Yeah…” He drawled, “About that. Do you have any hard liquor? I’m running low on antiseptic.”

David gave a defeated sigh. He was too tired for this.

“Pantry. Top shelf on the left. Should have some vodka up there.”

Frank followed his directions, making a noise of approval when he came away successful, bottle in hand.

“You can go back to sleep. This mess’ll be cleaned up before morning.” He said, and if David hadn’t known any better, he’d say the tone was almost regretful.

David looked to the crater dented into the plaster beside him, the lids of his eyes feeling heavier than they had a couple of seconds ago.

“Somehow I doubt that.”

Frank ruffled his hair as he brushed past him, saying “Have some faith.” Before he retraced Matt’s steps down the hallway.

“You owe me a new wall.” He called over his shoulder.

Frank threw a thumbs up without bothering to look behind him. 

\-----------------------------------------

Matt, sat in the bathtub, had foregone his shirt, allowing himself better access to re-torn stitches and tiny shards of glass that had punctured his flesh. Wielding some tweezers he’d found in the bottom draw, he tried to reach around at an awkward angle and pull out as much from his back as possible while he was still conscious.

He was nodding off by the time Frank came in, tweezers slipping from his grip and chin hitting his chest.

Frank placed the vodka onto a counter beside them then snapped his fingers in front of Matt’s face.

“Red. It’s Frank. I need you to stay with me for a sec.”

_Don’t you give out on me now, Red._

Matt groaned, pushing away Frank’s hand, “Don’t need you to tell me who you are. You’re about as subtle to the senses as a punch to the face.”

“That your way of telling me I smell bad?”

He didn’t. Not at all. Everyone had their own individual body odour, with many things combining to influence the final ‘product’. There were the favourable fragrances – body wash, shampoo, deodorant, hair product, fabric-softener and other scented products used throughout the day, revealing to Matt little clues about a person’s lifestyle or daily routine. It could be nauseating, toxic concoction sometimes – pheromones drowned under a thick layer of cheap, artificial perfumes or colognes that were a piss-poor imitation of any pure aroma, smelling more of chemicals from a lab than anything advertised by the seller. These things however were only a surface level disguise, obscuring the natural musk unique to the person emitting it. And strangely enough Frank’s had never bothered him.

The man never smothered himself with anything light or flowery. Whatever Matt was able to identify was either someplace he’d been, or just plain Frank. A surprisingly pleasant mix of strength and subtlety that was faint enough to not be an overbearing stimulation of the senses, but significant enough to lure Matt’s focus to intrigue.

“You stink like a pig.” Matt replied, because that was a hell of a lot easier and less embarrassing of an answer than trying to communicate any of the thoughts going through his head.

Frank responded by pulling his shirt over his head and throwing it at him. Matt caught the fabric and tossed it to the other side of the room. Frank watched him impassively, before he approached the tub and began climbing in.

Matt went rigid, his hand flying to the tile wall as he prepared for a swift escape.

“What’re you doing?”

“You broke the glass, you’re the lucky guy that gets to pick it out of my back.” Frank said, settling between his thighs as if the vulnerability of the position didn’t bother him one bit.

Matt’s heartbeat picked up, hammering hard against his chest.

“Really, you don’t say.” He swallowed, trying his best to mimic Frank’s blasé attitude, “I have a bit of shattered picture frame I wouldn’t mind removed myself.”

“Which is why you get to go next.”

Frank presented his back to Matt and leaned over, picking up the tweezers that had dropped to the ground and offering them to him.

“Red.” Frank prompted, turning his head over his shoulder when Matt sat dumbfounded and unmoving behind him.

Matt blinked, then took the tweezers from his fingers, avoiding any grazing of their hands as he did so. A prevention of intimacy that in retrospect seemed relatively pointless when he already had the man sitting pliantly between his legs. Matt hovered his hand over Frank’s skin, feeling for areas of heat – increased blood flow that indicated the location of each puncture. With a little concentration he could identify the small pieces by the way they shifted against his flesh with each rise and fall of his lungs. He had to make a conscious effort to release the tension at his shoulders so his hands wouldn’t shake, then he began picking out the glass.

With Matt’s precision and Frank playing the part of a perfect patient, quiet and compliant - not so much as twitching - he made fast work of clearing out the open cuts. It wasn’t long until he was tapping Frank’s shoulder, letting him know that he was finished. Frank took the tweezers from his hands and gave Matt a nudge, silently gesturing for him to turn around. Matt complied, though mentally he felt he was in a state of whiplash.

Is this what their rivalry had devolved to? Being at one another’s throat one minute then stitching each other up the next.

Matt tried to not think about Frank behind him, focused on the sound of David down the hall. Doesn’t even flinch when Frank has to dig deeper into his flesh to reach another splinter. It was only when he’d gotten a rhythm going, when the bandage on the floor began to clink together every time he added another shard to it, that the need to ask became overwhelming.

“Are we going to talk about it?”

Frank went very still behind him, and the sense of calm that the steady motion of his breathing had lulled Matt into disappeared.

“You want to blow a fuse again and destroy another room?”

“Depends.” Matt said, wetting his lips, “Do you have guns stashed away somewhere in here as well?”

“It’d probably be more efficient if I just threw you through some more walls.” Frank replied, effectively avoiding directly answering that question.

Matt laughed a little at that, groaning when the movement reverberated painfully through his chest.

“Please don’t.”

Matt’s back suddenly flared up in a stinging, fiery sensation when, without so much of a warning, Frank grabbed the bottle of vodka and poured it over the cuts, drawing out a shocked yelp from his throat.

"Pussy," Frank snorted, and Matt restrained himself from smacking him upside the head.

Instead, he whirled around, snatched the bottle from his grasp, and poured it over Frank’s head. The liquor ran down his face, burning the cut at his brow and the wounds at his back that mirrored Matt’s. Frank didn’t make a sound. Really, it was men like him that gave off unrealistically high expectations of masculinity. No matter how many scars Matt gathered, he couldn’t have an open wound sterilized without a gasp or a wince.

Unimpressed, Frank took back the bottle, bringing it to his lips and taking a swig before he set it down heavily. He then took a cloth, wiping the blood at Matt’s back a little more aggressively than what he thought was strictly necessary.

“If I were to try and walk out that door tomorrow morning, would you try and stop me?”

Frank sighed, sounding more tired than he did exasperated.

“Probably not the best idea. Don’t think I’ll be able to hold myself back next time.”

Matt scoffed, though he was aware of the truth there. His ribs thanked the man for the small mercy even if Matt himself didn’t.

“Plus, I’d say we’re about one more broken vase away from David kicking us both to the curb.”

He hummed. Honestly, Matt was more surprised that his host hadn’t done so already.

Frank got up, reaching for something on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet that Matt assumed was medically related, until Frank threw it at him. Unprepared, Matt flinched as he felt fabric hit his face before falling into his hands. He examined the material at his fingertips, his frown deepening when he realised what it was.

_Shit, really? The mask had been right here this whole time?_ He’d been looking for it for what felt like the better half of the week. He’d been able to scavenge the rest of his haphazardly stitched together suit. His combat boots, billy clubs and tactical gloves, the latter of which was especially worse for wear. Somehow the mask had escaped him. He should’ve intuitively known where to find it. Should’ve been able to smell it. Granted, it had been washed. But that shouldn’t have made a difference.

“Thanks.” He said, quietly.

“Scarf makes you look like a dumbass.” Frank explained.

Matt snorted, “Yeah, you’re not the first to point that out.”

Frank sat back down on the edge of the bathtub and finished redoing his stitches. When he spoke again, his voice was uncharacteristically soft and sincere.

“You want to fight. You want to make them hurt. I get that Red, believe me, I do. But you go out there alone with no plan and no backup, and the only one that’s going to suffer is you.”

Matt shook his head, “Fisk isn’t going to disappear. And he’s not going to be content with just pissing on my identity and leaving it at that…”

He placed the palms of his hands against his forehead and leaned against them until the pressure hurts. His head hurts regardless, and maybe it’s the residual concussion he may or may not have or his fucked, half-functional senses, or maybe it’s the pressure that builds behind his eyes rather than before them that crippled his ability to think straight.

“You still have a choice, Red.”

_Yeah. I die. Fisk wins. I lose. Fisk dies. Fisk loses. I lose. _There’s a choice there, sure, but it’s the antithesis of a win-win scenario.

“I don’t want to kill him.”

Frank froze.

“Don’t get me wrong, I want him dead. I’m not dumb enough to think the justice system will be enough to take him down. I just… Sometimes I wish there was a way to make it so that he’d never existed in the first place.”

Frank perhaps was the last person he wanted to be pouring his soul out to, but the irony of the matter was that he was also the only person left in the world who he was able to freely talk to about this.

“You know, maybe you’re right.” Matt chuckled, “Maybe I am a coward. Don’t know if I’m even capable of bringing myself to do it….”

Frank had to understand. That this was his battle. His responsibility. That allowing Frank murder Fisk would be worse. It would be shucking off the weight that was his burden to bear, simply because he was too weak to go through with what needed to be done.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I’d prefer having the shit kicked out of me over sitting here, nursing my wounds, feeling sorry for myself.”

“You’re leaving, then?”

Matt shrugged. “Can’t stay. He knows who I am. If I don’t show my face, he’ll set a fire under my ass and force me out of hiding. Will kill anyone I’ve ever known to be associated with in the midst of doing so.”

That shut Frank up, his heart skipping a beat. His trigger finger twitched, tapping against the porcelain of the tub. Matt recognised the nervous tic. It was often a prelude to a burst of violence, and his muscles tensed up a little with the knowledge.

“He’ll go after Karen.” His voice sounded cold and collected, but the rhythm of his breathing gave away his concern.

Matt offered a single nod, ignoring the bitter twist of his stomach.

“You got a lead?”

Despite what Frank seemed to think, Matt did have a plan when he had staged his breakout. He’d had plenty of time to contemplate during his recuperation, and his thoughts kept circling back to his copycat. Or more specifically, his suit. The material, the dimensions, the smell, even the feel of it. It was perfect. Bar the sizing, it had been an exact replica. And he knew only one craftsman capable of fabricating it.

“Yeah.” Matt replied, “I’ve got something in mind.”


	12. Chapter 12

David agreed to drop them off at a street close enough to their target that it wouldn’t take long to leg it the rest of the way, but far enough away that any possible surveillance in the area wouldn’t correlate Frank and Matt’s faces with his.

The moment his feet hit cement, Matt reached out with his senses. Newspapers and plastic trash bags moved across the road, picked up by traffic and the slight, frigid breeze. Faint sirens sounded a couple of blocks away. The smell of piss, smoke and sewerage permeated in the air. Home sweet home. He smirked, feeling set free and more grounded than he had in the last week.

“What’s got you looking so chipper?” Frank grumbled, adjusting the bag at his back.

“Nothing.” Matt dismissed, stretching out and wincing when brief jolts of pain still flared with the movement. Their rough and tumble last night had done no favours moving along the healing process, but it wasn’t anything he couldn’t push to the back of his mind.

Frank was armed to the teeth. The handgun at his back and the knives strapped to his thigh concealed by thick winter clothes. He was also sporting a layer of Kevlar; which Matt thought was a little overkill. Next to Frank, he may as well have been as vulnerable as the day he was born. The limited protection that his original suit provided was packed alongside the arsenal Frank carried in his bag, and without it he was stuck with nothing but his civvies.

“Come on.” Matt said, pulling up his hood. “It’s this way.”

He led Frank down a couple of side alleys, avoiding the main roads where anyone passing by might recognise them. It was New York. People tended to avoid eye contact. But Matt wasn’t about to take any chances. When they reached the building he’d been searching for, he stopped Frank with a raised hand, then gestured for him to duck down behind the stairwell when he heard Melvin Potter’s familiar gravelly tone as he parted ways with his parole officer.

_Betsy._ Huh. Matt had been half-convinced that Melvin’s beloved Betsy was some manner of inanimate object, but here she was, tone light and teasing as she kissed Melvin goodbye. In retrospect, Melvin’s reluctance to disclose information about Betsy suddenly made a lot more sense. It sure as hell wasn’t the relationship Matt expected to see between a criminal and their parole officer, both for legal reasons and the general dichotomy between the two professions, but he could see how a woman might be charmed by Melvin’s unassuming and gentle nature in contradiction of the things he was supposedly convicted of.

Matt waited until her car pulled away, then committed the sound of Melvin’s heavy boots trudging along the ground to memory.

Frank stepped forward, eager to follow. Matt took hold of his jacket and yanked him back.

“Goddamnit Red, are we gonna tail him or what?” Frank growled, twisting around and freeing himself from Matt’s grip.

“Just wait a second.”

While Melvin still hadn’t seen Matt’s face, it was likely he knew Frank’s, and Matt wasn’t going to risk him running for it because they were following a step too close behind. He listened as Melvin rounded the corner and waited until he was a couple hundred yards ahead before he tapped Frank’s shoulder and stood.

“Great.” Frank muttered, “Let me ask you something, Red, was losing him part of your plan? Because if so, we’re doing pretty good so far.”

“Shut up and take my arm.”

“… What?”

Matt sighed and linked his arm around Frank’s.

“I can track him, but it’s gonna require a bit of concentration. You pretend to guide me. Watch my back. But you follow my direction, got it?”

Frank glanced down at their linked arms and was silent for a moment before he finally huffed, trusting Matt’s lead on this one.

“Better not lose him.” He grumbled.

Matt’s ability to sharpen his senses to a centralised point was gradually returning, albeit not as effectively or efficiently as he was able to manage before. He’d never been simultaneously aware of everything. All humans had a limited amount of attention to go around. The human brain could only process so much data at any given time, after all. But now that he could trust Frank to watch his back – the man’s eyes and head always moving; checking the perimeter and watching for threats - he could forego some smaller foreground details that he usually would have to look out for in favour of honing in on Melvin’s lopsided gait like a tracking missile.

He followed Melvin all the way to the outskirts of the borough, pulling Frank to a stop when the footsteps stopped at an old storage warehouse. Matt heard the jangle of keys, then the creaking of the door as Melvin entered. His new workshop, Matt guessed.

Frank nudged his shoulder, “Something wrong?”

Matt shook his head, “I’ve got the place.”

They stalled for a couple of minutes before approaching the door, and both got in a quiet and almost invisible scuffle the moment they reached it, simply because they both really wanted to enter the building first. In the end it was Frank who won out, only because he was able to use his slightly bulkier frame to shove Matt out of the way and enter the warehouse first, gun raised, aiming down halls that were only dimly lit by the industrial lights lining the passageway.

Matt chased after him, pushing the gun down and placing himself squarely in front of the man, blocking his way.

“Really don’t have the energy for your bullshit right now, Red. Get out of the way.”

“No.” Matt stood his ground, tone hard and uncompromising, “If we do this, we’re doing it my way.”

There was a beat of silence, then: “Which is?”

“You stay put. I talk this out.”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

“There never was a deal.” He pointed out, turning towards where he could hear Melvin mumbling incoherently under his breath.

“Red-” He gave a frustrated sigh, “Matt, just hear me out, alright?”

That stopped him in his tracks. One part because it had been a request rather than an order, and also maybe one part because this was the first time Frank had used his name without a note of derision in his voice.

“Let’s say Fisk thinks you’re dead…” Frank paused, before clarifying, “Actually dead, this time. Six feet under.”

He waited for Matt’s nod. Matt supposed it was possible. It was incredibly unlikely that Fisk expected Matt to escape from his creative little death trap at the graveyard, but it also wasn’t the only time he had tried to have him murdered without success. There was a chance he’d gone back, checked for the body. At least gotten some hard evidence that one of his greatest adversaries had at last been thwarted.

“Let’s say he has no clue you’re coming after him. You’re just going to go in there and give away that advantage?”

Matt frowned. He had a point, but, “Melvin wouldn’t hand me over to Fisk.”

As much as he wanted to believe the words, it didn’t sound all that convincing, even to his own ears.

“Really? Because it looked to me like he was happy enough to make a shining new suit for one of his assassins.”

“Frank, if you have any better ideas you want to share-“

Frank opened his mouth, but Matt cut him off before he could get a word in.

“-That don’t include going in guns blazing and killing the guy, go for it. I’m all ears.” Matt finished, fully expecting Frank to draw up blank.

Frank did pause at that, his mouth falling shut, but when Matt huffed and made to turn again the grip around his arm held strong.

“Tell me what you need to know.”

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frank entered the workshop, gun in hand (despite Red’s protests) and stance at the ready. Frank knew he’d been spotted the moment Melvin’s mumbling was cut short; replaced by a sharp inhale as he caught sight of the intimidating intruder passing through the threshold of the room. He sprang into action, abandoning the suit he’d been working on and diving for the closest weapon. Frank let him. Didn’t really matter when the only thing within arm’s reach of him was a crowbar. Unless you were Red, gun usually beat out crowbar.

Melvin faced him, staying where he was, back up against his workbench. When Frank’s features were illuminated as he moved under an overhanging light, the man’s eyes grew wider.

“I - I know you…” He stuttered, “You’re…”

Frank kept his gun trained on Melvin as he examined the rest of the room, his gaze catching on the red suit in the adjacent room, locked behind a cage of industrial wire mesh.

“That his?”

Melvin stared blankly at Frank, his grip around the crowbar tightening.

Frank motioned towards the suit with a jerk of his head, “Fisk’s dog? The other Daredevil. That’s his, isn’t it. Who is he?”

Melvin’s eyes darted to what he was gesturing, before quickly locking back onto Frank.

“I can’t…” He said, voice quiet, then hesitated, a slight but noticeable quiver shaking his shoulders. “You don’t understand. He’ll hurt her… He’ll hurt Betsy.”

The way he eyed down the barrel of Frank’s gun. His gaze hard and unwavering, even as he pleaded with him. Frank knew that look. Had seen it plenty of times before. This wasn’t a man that was afraid of the bullet. He was afraid of what came after.

“You answer me.” He said, tone low and dangerous, “You answer me or I’ll bury a bullet in your skull then go after Betsy myself, you hear?”

It was a lie, of course. Frank had his own code. He wasn’t Red. Didn’t put any faith in anything as corruptible as religion or the American legal system. He’d come to realise pretty damn quick that the only justice in the world was the kind you made yourself. That a lot of humans were no better than parasites, and the only way to stop the spread of disease was to torch the motherfuckers. That, however, did not mean he was absent of a code of ethics. Despite popular belief, he wasn’t a complete psychopath. He didn’t harm innocents – actually went so far as taking meticulous preparations to ensure nobody got caught in his crossfire. He had empathy.

Melvin, half scared out of his mind, didn’t know that. He only knew of his reputation. Horror stories of gangsters strung up on meat hooks and left to bleed out among animal carcasses and entire cartels taken out single-handedly.

Frank just hoped that Red, listening in from the hallway, knew him well enough by now to catch onto his bluff. The last thing he needed was for him to burst in and try and save a man that by all accounts seemed to be working for Fisk.

“It’s not… It’s a decoy. For if he ever comes back… The first Daredevil… I’m supposed to make them find him with the suit.”

Frank’s eyes narrowed, “Them? Who’s them?”

“The cops, man – the FBI. Who do you think?”

Frank blinked. Christ. Fisk had them wrapped around his finger. If he hadn’t already bought the bureau then he had them eating right from his greasy fucking hands. Believing every brand of bullshit that came from his mouth. He had to give it to him. Fisk was a goddamn piece of work. Having the balls to have one of his own men kill the last witness capable of prosecuting him, setting up contingencies for his contingencies. Burying Daredevil alive then having a whole other plan that involved framing the idiot on the slightest chance that he may have survived.

“And the other guy? The one you made the suit for. You know his name?”

“He never said-“

“That’s bullshit!” Frank yelled, taking a step forward menacingly.

Melvin jumped at the sudden change in volume, “No! I swear, he never said anything. But…” He swallowed, paranoia causing his eyes to dart to the doorway, as if by revealing information he was calling upon Fisk to materialise into existence right then and there.

“I know he’s an agent. He was talking about it with the man who brought him here for measurements.”

Not just any hired merc then. Frank assumed as much after their little encounter on the rooftop. But he also didn’t know of any FBI agent capable of taking out a sniper with nothing but good aim and a rock.

Something seemed to click over in Melvin’s head, as he raised an open palm in a display of surrender, “You… You want to stop Fisk. You’re like Daredevil. The real one.”

Frank grunted, “Don’t think he’d appreciate the comparison.”

“Right, he didn’t-” He hesitated, rephrasing, “You want to kill the new Daredevil… I could help.”

Frank scoffed, keeping his gun right where it was, aimed squarely between Potter’s eyes, “I think you’ve helped enough-”

A short, low whistle cut through the following silence and Frank and Melvin twisted their heads towards the hallway.

_Red_. He must’ve heard someone coming.

“Got another customer scheduled to come in today?”

Melvin shook his head, “Sometimes Fisk sends his men.”

Frank cursed. He could just kill him. But Red was waiting in the other room, and he wasn’t really in the mood to deal with another moral crisis from the kid. The sound of footsteps echoed down the hallway, closing in on the workshop. Frank pressed a finger to his lips, then ducked behind a stack of wooden pallets toward the back of the room, listening closely as Melvin’s greeting was ignored by Fisk’s lackey.

“Are we alone?”

Melvin cleared his throat, “Yeah. Of course.”

“Hm. I thought I heard you talking.”

“Yes…” Pause. “I uh… I was talking to myself.”

An awkward silence filled the room as the man seemed to process that.

“Right…” He eventually replied, and Frank released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding, grateful that the guy was enough of a halfwit for the excuse to easily fall through without suspicion.

“So, you haven’t heard from him?”

“No.”

“Good. You have new orders. Fisk has decided that a sufficient amount of time has passed to assume that the man in the mask will not be returning. This workshop is no longer of use to him and thus will be promptly terminated. You will be transferred elsewhere.”

“What… Terminated-” He stammered unintelligibly, “What d’you mean? Transferred when?”

“Now.” He stated, a sense of finality to his tone, “If you’d come with me, Mr. Potter. I can explain everything you need to know.”

Melvin seemed reluctant to follow, but it was pretty clear that he was not being given a choice in the matter. He complied with a subdued, “Alright.” Then the pair of footsteps proceeded to exit the room.

Frank waited until he was sure they were gone, then called out, “You get all that?”

Red emerged from the hallway, meeting him in the centre of the workshop with a notably troubled expression.

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Still think your bud there wouldn’t turn you in?”

Red’s frown deepened, “He’s being coerced.”

“Sure Red,” He drawled, “You keep tellin’ yourself that.”

Suddenly, Red straightened to attention, his head cocked. The reaction reminded Frank of the pricking up of a dog’s ears.

“What is it?”

Red shushed him and held up a finger. Frank gave a frustrated huff, sick of being left in the dark.

“I hear footsteps.” He whispered.

“They coming back?”

“No… I think-” Red looked lost for a moment, then the switch happened. His face morphed into one of panic, and the look in his eyes sent a cold shiver of anxiety down Frank’s back.

“Red, what-“ Frank began, then stopped short when something clattered across the ground at the room’s entrance. He swung his head towards the sound, his heart stopping. Within the time span it took to register what it was that he was seeing, Frank’s eyes had flown from the grenade sitting innocuously on the floor, to Red, who was not wearing one fucking inch of body armour, and made the split second decision to dive toward him. He used his momentum to pull Red over a table, tipping it over in the process, then covered Red’s body with his own, placing his arms over his face and pinning them to the ground.

For a moment, all Frank felt was the heat and unrelenting force of the explosion. A whistle of splinters cascaded down around them as the light above shattered. The blast was impossibly loud, Frank’s ears ringing with it while bits of debris bounced off his back. Something heavier collided with his head, and he collapsed, sprawling across Red who, stunned and deafened by the noise, could only huff and jerk at the impact. Beside them, a shelf completely lost its balance and came crashing down, right on top of them.

It wasn’t until the cloud of dust and smoke was settling around them that Frank allowed himself a pained grunt as he reached for the back of his head, only to feel the bruise that was already forming there.

_What the fuck just happened?_

Frank tried futilely to get up, realising that he had been effectively pinned to the floor by the heavy metal weighing down his back, his right ankle aching from the sheer weight and awkward angle crushing it. Assessing his surroundings, he could see that while the shelf had fallen on them, they had been saved from being completely flattened as the table Frank had toppled provided them enough space between the floor and the shelf to move their arms a little. Though, there still wasn’t enough room for them to get the hell out of dodge.

When it had fallen, Frank had already been lying in a pretty inconvenient position, and now he was trapped, sandwiched between Red and cold hard metal. This was the bad part. Frank also wasn’t sure if they were planning to release another grenade. Which would make their situation markedly worse. But as the seconds ticked on by with nothing but the sound of their own breathing, Frank could only assume that they had moved on.

He looked down at Red, utilizing what limited range of movement he had available to pat him down, checking for injuries.

“Frank?” He croaked, unable to disguise the tinge of panic in his voice. He tried to move, using what space he had to feel the tipped table behind his head and the shelf above them, but he figured it out soon enough. They were stuck.

“Little warning would be appreciated next time.” Frank grated out, even though he knew it wasn’t Red’s fault. That even if he had warned him, there would have been very little options to choose from beyond what he’d already done. Nonetheless, Frank figured that since neither had seemed to have managed to break any bones, necks, or other body parts, they could count themselves pretty goddamn lucky.

“Frank.” Red repeated, obviously having ignored the gripe. He skimmed a hand over Frank’s side, and Frank’s body reacted to the touch with an involuntary shiver.

“I’m fine.” Frank replied gruffly. He was almost tempted to tell him to quit the distracting shit when Frank was still trying to assess their situation, but that would be admitting that he found him distracting in the first place.

Wanting out, Frank took a breath then pushed against the shelf pinning them down, his back screaming in protest from the treatment. He exhaled harshly through his nose, putting all his strength into pushing upwards at the awkward angle until the heavy load simply became too much. His muscles inevitably gave out, and he collapsed back on top of Red with a grunt.

Red’s eyes widened, and he reached a hand up towards his neck, “Frank!”

“What?” He yelled, matching Red’s volume and slapping away his hand. It was clear that Red was, to put it lightly, alarmed. Disorientated. And shouting at him probably wasn’t helping. But he was frustrated and rattled and had about zero patience for his bullshit right now. “Just give me one minute, Red. I can get us out of this if you give me one goddamn minute. _Christ_.”

He wouldn’t exactly describe the words as placating, but the intention was there. What he didn’t expect, was for Red to grow more distressed, his head moving from side to side as his breathing became uneven and choppy.

“Red – _Matt_, fucking breathe you dumbass!”

No response. No indication that he was even taking anything in. Frank didn’t understand. It was as if Red was purposefully not listening to one goddamn word -

The realization slapped Frank across the face.

_He can’t hear._

“Shit.”

Frank kicked himself for not putting it together sooner. His own ears were still ringing from the blast. He couldn’t imagine what hell Red’s auditory faculties were going through right now. Frank’s blood went cold. Shit, shit, _shit_. What if he’d just done irreversible damage? As unyielding and stubborn as he was, Red wouldn’t be able to do what he did blind _and _deaf.

Red was coming dangerously close to hyperventilation now, and Frank forced the thoughts to the back of his mind. Fell back to what had previously helped calm and ground him to the present, taking hold of Red’s hand and guiding it under his jacket to his beating heart.

It seemed to do the job, Matt’s breaths slowing as he tried to match the comparatively slow rise and fall of Frank’s chest.

“We’re gonna be fine, Red.” He promised, despite the knowledge that Red had no way of hearing him.

Red kept a hand firmly against his chest, and Frank placed his hands on either side of Red’s head to provide a better angle for leverage. He had another go trying to brute force the shelf away, cursing loudly when it barely budged, but refusing to give in.

Why did the thing have to be so fucking _heavy_?

Red wouldn’t stop squirming, trying his best to be useful by shifting around so they both had more room. Looking back, Frank decided the blame for what happened next could, in part, be placed on Red’s shoulders, because he only managed to accomplish making their situation more awkward by dragging himself across Frank’s more sensitive spots as he tried to search for a more comfortable position.

It wasn’t until he had to slump back against Red, taking a moment to catch his breath, that Frank became aware of the hardness strained against the material of his pants.

His breath caught in his throat. Red gave him an odd look, and for a moment Frank blanched, before the hand at his chest twitched and he realised that he was reacting to the erratic jump in his heartrate, and not the boner pressed lightly against his hip.

Frank couldn’t remember the last time that he had to deal with a situation like this. He hadn’t paid his dick two neverminds since his wife had died, and even before then he hadn’t had much of a sex drive. Frank had no idea what had even elicited the reaction, because he sure as hell wasn’t getting excited about their current predicament. Perhaps it was the warm body clinging to him that he begrudgingly trusted combined with said person rubbing up against him in the least helpful of ways because Red refused to fucking _sit still_. Whatever it was. Of all the times for his libido to decide to have a reawakening. This was by far. The worst.

For one, very small, very stupid moment, he convinces himself that Red – deaf, blind. Shit, probably still in shock. Red wouldn’t be able to catch on. This hope is completely shattered when, in the very next moment, Red goes completely still beneath him, eyebrows raised and heat rising to his cheeks as his lips formed into a very surprised _‘oh’_.

Frank clenched his jaw. Of course. _Of couse_ the perceptive fuck could feel it. Between the confusion and irritation at his loss of control over this resulting shit-show of their half-assed plan as well as his own bodily anatomy, he couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit mortified. Frank wanted to rectify the situation somehow, but his brain was filled with nothing but pure white static.

Was this really fucking happening right now? Maybe he was just having one, incredibly long nightmare - a result of too much stress and a lack of sleep.

He tried to slow the downward blood flow by focusing on how all the ways the pretentious little shit aggravated him, which almost seemed to work a little until Red went back to his wriggling, which did very little to help, both in the escape department and the whole progressively getting harder side of things.

He was about to work through his humiliation by taking it out on the stupid shelf that had trapped him in this situation when Red moved his hands from his chest and past either side of his waist to the shelf, where he could help Frank with the pushing process.

“On my mark.” He mumbled.

Frank glanced toward him, nodded, remembered that Red had no way of recognising the gesture even if he did have his hearing, then mentally prepared himself for what was up next.

“Go!” Red shouted, then they were both pushing, causing the shelf to creak and shift as they ever-so-slowly moved it back a couple of inches. Red was the first to notice the change, the crushing weight suddenly lifted from him.

Between the two of them, they were able to use their combined strength to move the shelf until there was enough space for Red to crawl out from underneath him. Unfortunately, this also meant that Frank had to hold the shelf by himself as he waited for Red to get out and get back to his feet. He yelled, his entire being – with an excruciating emphasis on his arms and back – shaking from fatigue due to the sheer physical strain from keeping the shelf propped up. Beads of sweat began to run down his face, leaving behind trails in the dust and dirt before they dripped to the floor.

Finally, _finally, _Red managed to get a hold on the shelf, lifting the weight from his shoulders and holding it while Frank eagerly made his own escape. He scrambled to his feet, placing a hand on Red’s shoulder once he was free, and Red instantly let go. The shelf fell to the ground with one final loud crash, and they both doubled over, hands on his knees, puffing from the exertion.

Frank tentatively tested the condition of his right ankle, leaning some of his weight into it and wincing when it flared up in pain. At the very least, it didn’t feel broken. Probably just a torn ligament. Nothing he hadn’t walked off before.

He examined the workshop, finding many of Melvin’s designs either destroyed or still burning. The area of concrete the grenade had landed at was now replaced by a small crater and when he looked to the other side of the table, he found that it’d saved them from a large amount of shrapnel now embedded into the material. His eyes moved over to the object that’d caused him so much unneeded grief, and he concluded that he was going to find whoever made these industrial sized shelves so fucking heavy, then promptly murder them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, that chapter was a slog that I really just wanted over haha. Apologies for the tardy update. I got distracted by my attraction to a faceless man covered in beskar and my love for baby yoda.
> 
> Also, I’ve realised that I am an idiot and used Poindexter’s name in the first chapter or two, which Frank and Matt had no way of knowing at the time, so I’ve gone and fixed that. Once this thing is done I’ll probably be going back and editing the whole work, as some chapters are rushed and not as good as others and I’m aware that as it is now there’s a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies that I’m not going to be able to really hash about until everything is done. 
> 
> Anyway, I should probably add that if you ever want to say hi feel free to msg me @ https://vaporeonaloy.tumblr.com/


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've had a question about the timeline for this fic, which I should probably add to the tags or somewhere where it's obvious, but to sort of give you guys an idea in terms of that:  
-We're talking season 3 here, so after the Defenders debacle   
-Story starts after Dex attacks the Bulletin as Daredevil (end of ep 6), assuming that instead of leaving Matt there, Dex takes him.  
-The last couple of chapters have been anywhere from ep 7 to 8  
\- This is probably the most I'll stick to canon, from here I kind of just let things go off the rails, as I'm not really interested in doing a retelling of the show and I'm sure you guys wouldn't want that either  
Thank you for all the support you guys have been giving for this fic. I'm not a fast writer by any means but to know that even one person is still reading keeps me going even when trying to get through some of these chapters can be a bit of a slog.  
Anyway, that's enough from me.

Matt couldn’t remember hearing the explosion going off. All he knew was that one moment he was standing, and the next Frank was tackling him to the ground and crowding over his body. He felt the violent shaking of the ground from the blast - the shockwave that travelled across the floor and vibrated through his very bones. He would’ve thought it another earthquake, if it wasn’t for the suffocating smell of powder and smoke filling his nose.

He must’ve blanked out for a bit, after that. The second it registered that he couldn’t hear, panic had spread throughout his body like a poison, heart and mind racing whilst his muscles felt progressively more paralysed. He was trapped. And for a moment there, all he could think about was being under that building again, slowly crushed by the debris and cement. Then, equally as terrifying, he was in the graveyard, unable to hear or see or smell or feel much of anything. It wasn’t until Frank brought a hand to the steady, almost scarily calm beat of his heart, that Matt was pulled out of it. He couldn’t hear. But he wasn’t underground, either. He wasn’t in that goddamn box. Frank was here, the warmth of his body sinking into him past the barrier of their clothes. And somehow that made everything a lot more bearable.

If there was any space for emotion beyond his disorientation and overall distress, Matt would be humiliated. Here Frank was again, swooping in and saving the damsel, and somehow Matt’s stupid brain had imprinted on the bastard like a baby bird – everything that used to feel intimidating and dangerous about the man now replaced by a general blanket of protection and calmness.

It took him longer than he’d like, but with what senses remained, Matt was slowly able to put together what was going on and, in an effort to retain what dignity he had left, help Frank work their way out of the situation. Once they’d caught their breath, Frank had pulled Matt’s arm over his shoulder, and helped guide him out of there. Matt didn’t have much choice but to trust him. Hold on for dear life and hope that he didn’t lose Frank in the crowds of New York. With zero sight and hearing it was very unlikely he’d find him again if Frank were to leave him. For one thing, he already had real trouble distinguishing the movements of individual people in dense crowds. It was a different horror show altogether when losing his hearing meant losing all sense of his surroundings as well.

He spent much of their escape in a relative state of dissociation. Oscillating between anger, resentment, and genuine despair on the one hand, and an odd detachment from the whole scenario on the other. Frank being so close wasn’t exactly helping. He felt no small amount of guilt after the man had literally thrown himself on top of Matt, and his brain was bring incredibly uncooperative by continuing to provide reminders of what had decidedly _not_ been one of the knives strapped to Frank’s thigh poking into his hip. He wanted nothing than to forget that the brief moment had ever happened, and he was sure that Frank shared the sentiment. But now that there was even the possibility of a mutual attraction there, even if it was not an entirely conscious one, he couldn’t help but be hyperaware of it. If he’d been confident that his deafness was only temporary, he’d be almost glad for it, if only because it meant he didn’t have to tangibly hear the loudness of the awkward silence between them. As it was, however, dealing with his sudden inability to hear was a little higher on his priority list.

For now, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other. One problem at a time. He knew they had returned to the bustle of New York when Frank pulled him closer, using his own bulk to shove their way through the crowds, though if he were asked their exaction, Matt would be unable to provide much of an answer. In compensating for the loss of his other senses, Matt’s nostrils were assaulted with all matter of bodily odour. A lot of it, he had no other way of describing than as the smell of sex. Not the good kind either. Nasty. Sex, groin, hair, and underarm sweat. There were also the exhaust fumes, cigarettes, hot dogs sold along the busy walkways and the unmistakably scent of piss. Lovely. He could feel the vibration of the footsteps around him and the rumbling of the traffic on the road to their right.

At one point, Frank guided them through a door. Heated air warmed his cheeks and the smell became a lot more bearable. A wafting aroma of freshly made coffee, the sweet buttery smell of fried onion and hash browns, the grease of grilled hamburgers, bacon, and eggs, yeast from recently baked bread.

Frank moved towards what Matt could only assume was the back of the room – somewhere where he could keep a watchful eye on the entrance and all the occupants in the area. He then pushed at Matt’s shoulder until he was seated and nudged him with an elbow when he didn’t immediately make room for Frank, who settled next him, placing himself as a protective barrier between Matt and anyone in the vicinity that was brave enough to approach. It was only then, that the hearing in his left ear went from an eery nothingness, to a faint buzz. It wasn’t much, but Matt clung on to the sound like a drowning man gasping for air.

Every inch of his attention centralised on the noise. He reached out with his senses and slowly – ever so slowly – the buzz turned into a thrum, the thrum became an indiscernible garble, until eventually, after what felt like hours, the garble finally transformed into conversation – his mind filtering through an amalgamation of different voices, accents, and languages around him as the world slowly came swimming back into focus.

Matt gave a weak, “Are we in a diner?” Then celebrated the ability to hear his own voice by following up with a slightly more incredulous: “Your first thought after having a grenade thrown at us was to get a coffee?”

Frank’s heart jumped at the sound of Matt talking, but he played it off by taking a long sip from his mug, before placing it down heavily against the counter, “Isn’t yours?”

Matt rubbed at his temples and groaned. Truth be told, he didn’t really know what he would’ve done were their positions reversed. Call Foggy maybe. That option was usually reserved for the most horrific of his crisis’s. He wanted to be annoyed, to be able to direct the remnants of distress into aggression or anger, but he couldn’t help but be comforted by the feeling of Frank beside him, watching his back, his finger lightly tapping against his own thigh every time someone passed the table. He wondered briefly at what point Frank’s presence had morphed from being terrifying and ominous to reassuring.

He could practically feel his gaze burning into the side of his head, watching him carefully. He pushed the rest of his coffee toward Matt and after a short pause of considering the thing, Matt took it, uttering a quick thanks before bringing the mug to his lips.

“You know what, Red?” Frank started when it became clear that he was more engrossed in consuming sweet, sweet caffeine than discussing his extended spell of temporary deafness. “You really are the Devil. You have to be. Because beyond God hating you, there is no explaining the amount of bullshit that gets hurled your way.”

He obviously means it as a joke, or a light jibe, at the very least. Something to alleviate the atmosphere, but it hits entirely wrong – all sharp edges where Matt’s just been scraped raw.

“Let me tell you something, there’s something in the military we call a ‘shit-magnet’. You know, someone who for some inextricable reason can’t help but attract the next bullet or clusterfuck of a scenario. Had a friend tell me once that I was a shit-magnet of the highest order. But let me tell you, Red. You are doing your goddamned best to knock me off the pedestal for that title.”

Foggy had called it going out and intentionally searching for the next fight. Matt liked that. Gave agency to his actions. Purpose and reason behind his injuries and pain beyond ‘bad luck’.

“Mm…” Matt responded half-heartedly into his mug, the heat of the beverage thawing out the stiff frozenness of his fingers. “If it makes you feel any better it’s not intentional.”

There was a moment of quiet, and Matt got the feeling that Frank was looking him over, analysing the exhausted and dejected expression that he failed to hide under his hoodie.

“Hearing must be alright if you got all that, at least.” He said tiredly, his tone notably softer.

Matt grunted a noise of affirmation and drained the remainder of the coffee as an excuse to avoid the chance of him being asked to elaborate on that. He was still a little freaked out, if he were being perfectly honest, and his right ear – his bad ear, still wasn’t doing all that great. Not that he should’ve been surprised. If a smack across the head from a sparring partner was now enough to temporarily rob him of his ability to detect objects around him, being in close proximity to an active grenade was definitely enough to make him lose his hearing for a while. Just another shitty reminder that he was more fragile than he cared to admit.

That said, it _was_ a relief, to have audio filtering through his ears again, to be able to sense the lights humming above them and the sound of clattering dishes as people discussed inane topics, completely oblivious to the corruption plaguing the city that they lived in.

“Your ribs?” Frank asks.

For a second there, Matt had no idea what Frank was talking about, before he realises Frank was still running down the list of all the shit that could be wrong with him.

“They’re fine.”

He was more concerned with how much time he’d lost between them losing Melvin and making their way to the diner, his fingers subconsciously moved towards his wrist. Not for the first time he felt the depressing absence of his braille watch.

“What time is it?” He asked.

There was a pause as Frank looked around for a clock, then, “About half past eleven. Had to take some time to make sure we weren’t spotted. Police in the area were on high alert after the blast. Don’t think Fisk notified them about his little plan to blow up your buddy’s workshop.”

Whatever he was going to say next was cut off when a waitress approached then with a hot pot of coffee. When she greeted them, Matt had to remember to swivel his head up to the voice.

It was funny. How something as simple as eye contact and almost imperceptible glances was such a big aspect of how sighted people communicated. He’d gotten used to conducting himself as if were more functionally blind than he was when he was out in public. Lying to his friends and acting like he was a clumsy, helpless duckling of an attorney had become the everyday grind.

Being Daredevil almost came as a relief sometimes, as there was no longer a need to constantly have to use his amplified senses to keep up the façade of blindness. But even then, it still wasn’t the truth. He’d had to learn how to put up this front for appearances sake, acting as if he could see things he sometimes could not. Such as when he’d been asked to look over photos of missing persons or locations on maps and he’d be unable to explain that it was as effective as waving a blank piece of paper at his face. Or that one embarrassing time he’d had to make a poorly executed escape after being asked by the police to sit down with a sketch artist to help them locate a criminal. Neither state was natural to him. The only thing that did feel natural now, where he felt there was nothing left to hide, was when he was alone with Frank. And that in itself, he thought, was pretty fucked.

He gave a nod when she offered to refill the mug. Frank flashed her a smile that he probably hoped would distract her from their otherwise haggard and beat appearance, which seemed to work a treat, if her heart rate was any indication. His ability to perceive a person’s appearance was, at best, a fairly modest judgement. He didn’t really “see” faces other than in the vaguest sense of the word. He could also make out silhouettes, with most of the detail being depth-based. All said and done though, he was quite aware that Frank was attractive. Karen’s reaction to seeing the guy gave away that much, though she wasn’t the only person’s attention that he managed to draw through looks alone. Matt had been borderline appalled back at the courthouse by the number of people that seemed to have similar responses to seeing the man convicted of murdering numbers up into the double digits, regardless of whether those people were criminals or not.

_He looks better than I ever have and he’s not even wearing a tie._

Matt closed his eyes, willing the thoughts away. It was a superficial, surface-level thing to think about right now. He didn’t want to imagine how he may himself may feel about Frank’s appearance, or any of all the other ways the man could be appealing to his senses. That was a cliff dive into his own perception of Frank that he wasn’t sure he’d survive from.

When she walked away the tension fell away from his shoulders, and he went back to scanning the environment is his usual manner, head cocked and less focused on looking straight ahead.

Something was off. The smell of iron? Maybe copper in the air. Matt frowned.

“Are you bleeding?”

Frank seemed surprised by the question, and there was a brief pause, before: “Huh… Shit.”

“Let me see.”

Before Frank could protest, he lifted his hand toward the one Frank had raised to his forehead.

“Uh…” He uttered; his body gone rigid.

Frank had a gravel to his voice that indicated he wasn’t exactly comfortable. He was… not fidgety, exactly. But he seemed a little nervous, though Matt could credit the slightly erratic pulse and his twitchiness as a by-product of too much caffeine.

His fingertips lightly ran over the expanse of his forehead, and Matt filed away the strength of his brow into his memory bank before he located the open cut. It certainly wasn’t the most hygienic method, but it was his best chance of getting a good “look” at it. It wasn’t big or deep enough to require stitches, but all the same, Matt took a napkin and placed it over the wound to stem the bleeding.

He hesitated, before giving a gruff, “Thanks.”

There was that movement again. It was slight – near indiscernible. It was only after Frank repeated the action for the fourth or fifth time that Matt recognised what it reminded him of. Matt wasn’t unused to people being uncomfortable with meeting a blind man’s eyes – the minute twitch of someone pulling away from the contact was a motion that had become incredibly familiar. The vacancy in his gaze also, to some extent, was why he felt so subconscious without his glasses. The only reason it had taken him so long to notice Frank’s little sporadic game of glancing away then looking over, then glancing away again, was because as far as Matt knew, his eyes had never been an issue for the man before.

Frank took the napkin from his hands then brought it to his head himself.

Matt cleared his throat, “So, Fisk might have Melvin Potter, but at least he gave us enough information to look into the next lead.”

Silence. Then: “The next – you realise you could’ve gone deaf today?”

Matt ground his teeth together, “Yes Frank-“

“-Are you terminally stupid?”

“-I’m fairly fucking aware. We-”

“_You_ shouldn’t have even been out there today-“

From here on out Matt understood that he and Frank were having another row of talking over each other simultaneously, with neither really listening to what the either was saying. He went on regardless, because frankly, Frank was a shit, and they both didn’t do well with passive aggressive subtext and were even worse at the silent treatment. And as much as Matt wished it weren’t so, this often meant he had no control over what their discussions dissolved into.

“You’re the one that wanted to come with me.”

“Oh, _come on,_ Red, that’s bull and you know it. If I hadn’t come-“

“If you weren’t prepared for some heat, then you shouldn’t have-“

“Christ, this is the thanks I get for saving your ass again.”

“I did not _once_ ask for your help-“

“You’re fucking unbelievable, you know that?“

“And yet you tagged along anyway, then have the audacity to blame _me_-“

“You’re the whiniest, most stuck up-“

“Look asshole, if you want out, then go ahead-“

“Ungrateful, hypocritical piece of shit-“

“But I am not giving in until Fisk’s been stopped.”

“I’ve ever had the displeasure of working with.”

They go on like this for probably a full minute, and the _bull-headed, arrogant, jackass_ refused to take in one goddamn word of Matt’s. Matt was about three seconds away from diving across the table and throttling him, repressed frustration and desperation threatening to boil over, but in their current position he was trapped. Not by a heavy, steel-framed object pinning them to the floor this time, but by societal convention, and the possibility of having the police called on them were they to cause a scene. He resorted to slamming his fist against the table, which caused all the cutlery cluttered across the table to jump and conversation around the diner to abruptly stop as he drew the attention of about a dozen eyes.

Matt restrained himself, forcing down the anger into a tight little box and waiting it out until the awkward silence faded away as conversation in the room returned.

“That was very mature.” Frank noted dryly.

“_Agent Nadeem_.” He hissed, ignoring the sarcastic remark, and getting them back on topic. “He’d be able to identify Fake-devil.”

Frank half-laughed, half-scoffed at that.

“Ah, Agent Nadeem from the FBI, as in _Fisk’s _Bureau of Investigation? Let me ask you something. What makes you think this guy will be any better than the last? If Fisk hasn’t already bought him, he’s being blackmailed. And if he’s not being blackmailed then he’s just as much a scumbag as Fisk is.”

Matt’s lips thinned into an angry line.

“He’s all we got.”

Frank sighed, leaning back into the seat.

“I hate to poke holes in your plans, Red, but here’s the thing. I don’t know if you remember, but we’re wanted men. You see, we step one foot into the bureau, and they’ll arrest us on the spot.”

“So, we stake out his workplace. I can track him to his home.”

“Oh good.” Frank nodded, “That’s perfect. We can assault him in front of his whole family.”

Matt released a frustrated growl.

“I’m not arguing about this with you. I’m going. You want to come. Fine. But you’re not going to stop me.” He said, then punched Frank’s arm a little more roughly what was strictly necessary, gesturing for him to move so he could get out from the booth, “Let me up.”

Frank frowned, and for a couple of moments, Matt thought he’d fight him on this too. His trigger finger tapped against his thigh – one of Frank’s few nervous tells, until he does one final sweep of the diner, lets out a huff and gets up, allowing Matt access to slide across the booth.

Matt stood up a little more abruptly than what his body was prepared for, and a wave of dizziness hit him. His hand slipped from where he was supporting himself against the table, and he stumbled forward. Frank wrapped an arm around his waist, keeping him up. Matt found his hand curled around the fabric of Frank’s shirt, and he dropped his head and released his grip, scowling as he stepped away.

“I’m fine.” He said, even though Frank had never asked. He began walking away, eager to move past the moment as if it had never happened, when Frank stops him.

“Exit’s the other way.”

Matt curled his hands into fists as heat raised to his cheeks. _Great._ Now Frank knew just how disorientated he was. With a slightly sheepish look he did a one-eighty and made his way towards the door, Frank following closely behind.

It wasn’t until he hit the sidewalk that Matt remembered that he still had no idea where he was. His own mental map of the city wasn’t much use when he had no frame of reference of knowing where Frank had guided him. And his inability to find a way out of a fucking _diner_ didn’t give him a huge amount of confidence about being able to navigate his way through the city.

“Where are we?” Matt asked through gritted teeth. He hated this. Hated that he had to rely on someone else.

Frank, at the very least, seemed to be caught off guard by the question. Instead of giving him an answer though, he took a step toward the road and raised a hand, hailing a cab.

Driven by a knee-jerk instinct, Matt rushed forward and yanked Frank’s arm backward.

“What?” Frank hissed.

“I’m not getting in that.”

He got a very strong feeling that Frank was looking at him like he was crazy.

“Why not?”

Matt worked his throat, unsure of how to explain.

“It’s a cab.” He pointed out, dumbly.

The car was pulled over at this point, though Frank made no move to get in.

“Yes? Yes, it is. Your point?”

“I’ve… had some unsavoury experiences with cabs recently.” He stated, because that was easier than having to unpack the whole _‘I broke out of a prison after almost being killed, fell asleep in a taxi and then woke up to find myself being driven off the end of a pier’ _or even _‘I was directly involved in the downfall of the Russian mob and they used to use cabs as a form of camouflage for their human smuggling ring’_.

“It’s New York. Who hasn’t?”

“Frank. Just…” He sighed, “Unless you’re driving, I’m not getting in the goddamn taxi.”

He breathed hard through his nose then rumbled out an angry, “Fine. We’ll walk then. I’ll fill you in on the way.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cornering Agent Nadeem in his own home went about as well as Matt could have hoped it to. He’d taken the mask. For all current purposes, he figured it was easier to try and convince him that he was the real Daredevil, rather than try and convince him that Matt Murdock wasn’t a criminal.

Frank had to go ahead and make his life more difficult by refusing to wait outside, which meant Matt had to deal with the resulting near heart-attack the man underwent when Nadeem spotted him after Matt had pinned him to his fridge, sipping on one of his beers in the corner of his garage. Frank at least had the decency to stay quiet while Matt explained who he was, why they were here, and _no,_ they weren’t planning to kill anyone tonight.

Nadeem’s heart still hadn’t really calmed, but he also was no longer trying to lie or escape, so that was progress.

“Let's say I believe the guy that just broke into my house with a mass murderer in tow… Let’s just say that. What do you got? Can you give me a description? Hair colour? Eyes? Distinguishing marks?”

Frank really, truly tried not to laugh at that, but ultimately failed, fluid catching in his throat and beer snorting out through his nose as he coughed out a chuckle. Nadeem jerked at the noise, and his bewildered gaze flashed to him.

Matt ignored him. “The man who attacked the Bulletin dressed as Daredevil. He’s in the FBI.”

Nadeem froze, his muscles going taught, and his heart did an erratic little jump that indicated to Matt that he was definitely on the right track here. He doesn’t try to argue with Matt. Doesn’t lie or try to deny.

No, all he responded with, was, “You’re working with the Punisher. Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”

That was easy.

“Because we’re the only ones capable of stopping him.”

He hesitated for a moment, mulling that over.

“I’m not handing you a federal agent if you’re going to kill him.”

“I don’t do that.”

Nadeem didn’t reply verbally, but Matt was pretty confident that he was giving a pointed gaze toward Frank with a disbelieving expression.

This was only confirmed to him when Frank responded, “The only people I kill are the ones that deserve it.”

“Comforting.” Nadeem muttered dryly, “Excluding the murderer in the room, the agents you beat up the other day? One of them is still in the hospital. All of them just doing their jobs. Taking down Fisk is our job, not yours.”

“Maybe if you weren’t so shit at your job, we wouldn’t have to do it for you.”

Nadeem lurched toward him, and Matt had to hold him in place.

“_Not helping_, Frank.” He called over his shoulder, before turning back to Nadeem, “If there’s one thing we agree on, Nadeem, it’s the greater good. Like house incarceration in exchange for good intel. Sometimes you and I have to hurt one person to save another. So, what’s his name?”

Nadeem goes quiet, and when he speaks next, his voice is hard as steel, “I need your word that he won’t die.”

Matt shook his head with a scoff, “My word can't mean anything to you.”

“But I need to hear you give it.”

“Well, I need him,” Unsure in that moment whether he himself was referring to Frank or Fake-devil, “So you got it.”

Nadeem sighs, like it’d been better if Matt had refused altogether, “I’ll tell you his name. Where he lives. But you go about this my way. You slip into his place. You look for any evidence that ties him to the Bulletin attack or to Fisk. If you find any, you leave it where it is. And you set off his fire alarm on our way out. The fire department arrives, and you circumvent a search warrant. But if you don't find anything, - the guy goes on with his life.”

“Fine.” Matt said. Honest even though he would’ve said just about anything if it meant getting the information he needed.

“His name.” He pressed, when Nadeem didn’t immediately give it.

Nadeem wet his lips, his eyes darting from Matt to Frank behind him.

“Spit it out.” Frank hollered from the back, impatient.

Matt lightly jostled his shoulder, drawing Nadeem’s back to him, then lowered his voice, imploring.

“Who is he?”

Nadeem took a breath through his nose, and his pulse slowed back to an even rhythm, the tension coiled in his shoulders releasing as he allowed the name to fall from his lips.

“Special Agent Ben Poindexter.”


	14. Chapter 14

Frank followed half a step behind Red as they scaled the exterior stairway to Poindexter’s apartment. He wasn’t sure exactly of which floor they were up to, but Red had yet to pause or stutter, so he trusted that he would be able to direct them where they needed to go.

Ever since the disaster that was the workshop blast, Frank had found it incredibly difficult to pay attention to much else other than Red. He blamed the new suit. Without the mask, Red was easy on the eyes, sure. Boyishly handsome, devoid of guile, charming, but never too oily. Textbook look for a lawyer to aspire to. Not exactly something Frank could say he was drawn to. But now? He had never thought he’d live to see the day that he actually_ missed_ Red’s old Daredevil costume.

It was uncharacteristic of Frank to have his focus so easily swayed. Yet, here he was, eyes caught on the way Red’s skin-tight, thermal compression shirt followed a streamlined flow over his figure. How his stupid mask somehow only managed to accentuate the line of his jaw, leading to the curve of his upper lip. Here he was, wishing desperately for the dumb janky eyesore that he was used to.

What was all the more egregious, was the fact that his current get-up wasn’t even practical. It offered _zero _protection – definitely not from a knife or a bullet and barely against the harsh chill of winter - something that, to Frank’s chagrin, Red refused to acknowledge. Not to mention that the mask virtually screamed ‘Blind guy!’, or at least it did to Frank. To be fair, to some thug getting his ass kicked, whether the vigilante could see was unlikely to be at the forefront of their mind. It would just look menacing, like there was something otherworldly or inhuman about Daredevil.

“There a problem?”

Frank jerked to awareness at the sound of Red’s voice, and he realised after a moment that they had stopped, though Red hadn’t bothered turning toward him to ask the question.

He averted his eyes with a quick, “Nope.”

Frank hadn’t even known he’d been staring, how the _fuck_ had Red noticed?

Red held for a beat longer, then simply shook his head and moved toward the window. He ran a hand across the sill and felt for a lock or opening mechanism. When he found none, he quietly slid it open and slipped inside, gesturing with a jerk of his head for Frank to follow.

Frank stared into the darkness of the apartment.

“Can’t see shit.” He noted.

“What a nightmare that must be for you.” Red murmured sardonically, moving to the light switch and flicking it on.

Frank rolled his eyes, then scanned the newly lit room.

“I’m not sure how much time we have. We should split up. See what we can find.”

“Hm.” Frank agreed absentmindedly.

He followed Red into the living room, and they both got to work combing the area. Frank went straight for the desk and rummaged through the documents there before moving over to the bookshelf. Its contents were relatively generic – very little fiction and genres that spanned between recipe books and IT manuals. Neither of which had any incriminating links to Fisk, or even really tell him anything about the asshole.

He moved back toward the kitchen, pausing at a crunch of glass underfoot. Frank glimpsed upwards, then took a step closer to the cracked picture frame hung from the wall. Red sidled up beside him, curious to what had caught his attention.

“Tell me what you see.” Matt murmured to him.

Frank looked to him, surprised by the request. Red rarely asked for assistance. Not that he ever really needed it in the first place. It was to a point that at times, Frank forgot he was blind altogether. The thought that he may be lacking something that came so easily to an everyday person hadn’t really occurred to him before.

If anything, it was like Frank spent half his time contemplating just how much Red could see, and didn’t tell him about, and the other half wondering how the hell he was able to sense the shit that he actually did tell him about. It didn’t really occur to him until now that Red wasn’t able to take in the entire “scene” within a fraction of a second like a sighted person would, and even with all his other senses, there wasn’t really anything to match or compensate for the efficiency that ordinary vision provided when it came to things like this.

“Uh… It’s a photo.” Frank watched Red from the corner of his eye, then cleared his throat. He was going to have to be a little more descriptive than that.

“Looks like an old workplace. Office environment. Normal enough. Bunch of people smiling for the camera... The way it’s shattered gives the impression he may have a grudge against one of the women he worked with there.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Majority of the frame is just a web of broken glass, but the impact is centred around a girl’s face…” Frank squinted, picking up something he’d missed initially, and read out the sign in the background, “Brooklyn Suicide Prevention Center.”

“He there?”

Frank glanced toward Red. The mask hid away the majority of what Frank would usually be able to read from Red’s expression, but the rigid line of his shoulders was a clear enough indication of his unease. Returning to the photo, he gave each man’s lower facial structure, height and build a quick scan, before shrugging.

“Maybe. Gotta be honest, Red. I didn’t get much of a look of the guy that night.”

Red gave a frustrated huff and turned away. He rifled through some of the kitchen drawers, then returned with something in hand.

“What is this?” He asked, laying his hand flat so Frank could take what looked like a pill bottle.

Frank inspected the label, “Clozapine.”

He hadn’t heard of the medication, and Red’s inquisitively cocked head indicated that he wasn’t familiar with the name either. Red went to move on again, though this time he gave Frank’s shoulder a friendly pat, and his touch grazed fingertips across the nape of Frank’s neck as he passed by. The contact sent shivers down his back and caused everything to suddenly become far too loud, his mind going blank.

Frank swallowed.

_What the fuck was that?_

Okay. So maybe he was attracted to the asshole. He could man up and admit that much, especially in the quiet of his own mind. It wasn’t that farfetched. He’d had his moments before without it ever becoming an issue. Hell, he’d found Billy attractive once, when he was still playing the part of his friend and ally, and he’d never done anything with that. Not only because he was straight as an arrow, but also because they both strongly abided to the don’t ask, don’t tell military mindset at the time.

Even without all that. Even if he was willing to fool around, Frank had never found the idea that appealing. He had Maria, and not only did he feel obligated as a good father and a loyal husband to quash any interest in the bud, but he was already so far gone on her that anyone could have approached him and the thought of any kind of intimate involvement would be simply a surface level consideration, if that.

Honestly, Frank was glad he had a name to put to the strange tension he felt whenever he was around Red. And now that he was aware of it, it was easy to admit to himself. Granted, it was a kind of terrifying to know that he was already in this deep. That he cared for the little shit. And that, once again, he had placed himself in the incredibly vulnerable position of being hurt again should something happen to Red. But there was no identity crisis. No reminders that he was still married to Maria even though she was dead. Wasn’t even a set plan on what he was going to do with the information. He didn’t think it would be great progress to move from getting punched in the face for trying to stop Red from getting himself killed, to getting punched in the face for making unwanted advances.

“Frank.” Red called.

He blinked, then placed the pill bottle on the bench and followed Red’s voice into the other room.

“The suit's here.”

“How-“

“I can smell it. GSR and latex.”

Right. Because Red could discern between different fabric by their smell. Of course.

Red followed his nose to an open dresser, then pushed aside the clothes hanging there to reveal a safe. Frank watched as he pressed an ear to the lock, before Red’s deft fingers got to work. Frank went quiet, allowing Red to fully focus his hearing on the mechanism.

He gave an impressed huff when the safe clicked open after about roughly thirty seconds of Red fiddling with the lock.

“You know what, Red. You would make one hell of a criminal.”

Red snorted derisively, “Yeah, could give you a run for your money.”

He elected to ignore the comment in favour of glimpsing over Red’s shoulder at the small stash held inside the wall.

“It’s gone.” Red noted without so much as having to lift a finger to check the safe’s contents.

Frank hummed affirmatively. The suit was clearly absent, and without Red’s senses, he’d have no assurance that it’d even been here in the first place.

“Must’ve moved it.”

He squeezed in beside Red and unearthed a pistol, a couple rounds of ammunition, and a passport. He pocketed the latter, while Red pulled out a cassette player.

“What’ve you got?”

Red frowned, then switched it on.

_*When the crows come to the birdfeeder, I kill them with rocks.*_

The sound quality was crackly and dated, but Frank could detect just how young the voice was.

_*What does it feel like to watch them die?*_

Frank glanced toward Red, searching for his reaction. There was little to find there, Red holding surprisingly impassive in the face of what could only be a young Benjamin Poindexter discussed some very early onset sociopathic tendencies to a therapist.

_*Have you been doing our exercises?*_

_*Yes… But then the neighbour brought home a box of stray kittens. They were in the yard... I killed them with rocks, Dr. Mercer. I tried not to, but I liked it.*_

Red stopped the recording, his grip tight around the cassette player.

“So… Kid’s pretty fucked in the head.” Frank grumbled, “Don’t need a bunch of tapes to tell us that much.”

Red went awfully quiet, his mind obviously churning.

“What is it now?”

He shook his head slowly, before wetting his lips, “This is evidence, Frank.”

Frank frowned. “Evidence for what?”

Red opened his mouth, then closed it again.

The hesitation was all Frank needed for it to click into place. The fucking lawyer had finally made a return. “You can’t be serious.”

Red stood up and turned to face him, “Killing Poindexter won’t get us any closer to stopping Fisk. If we don’t get killed ourselves in the process, it’ll likely end up just causing us more problems.”

Frank rubbed the back of his head agitatedly, “Christ Red. You’re like a goddamn yo-yo with this, its exhausting.”

“Look, I didn’t…” He took a deep breath, “I never agreed to killing Poindexter. Or Melvin, or Nadeem, or anyone else for that matter… I said Fisk. Just Fisk.”

“You can't just make exceptions to the rule, Red. That ain't how it works.”

Red didn’t respond. In fact, it seemed he’d stopped paying attention altogether. His head was tilted again, listening for something that was beyond Frank’s own senses.

“What?” He whispered.

“Shit.” The curse was barely audible; hollow and haunted in a way that didn’t suit Red.

If there was a man without fear, he was pressed to believe that Red was probably it. Frank had yet to encounter anything that truly shook the man. To witness the visible tremor that ran through Red’s frame... There was only one assailant that Frank could think of that could illicit that kind of reaction.

Frank’s trigger finger twitched as an undercurrent of hot fury flared up from the pit of his stomach, “He’s here?”

“Shit. Shit. _Shit._”

Frank took hold of Red’s shoulder and he startled slightly, brushing Frank off.

“I - we need to go.”

Without warning, Red tackled him to the ground.

It took him a few moments to register the noise of the gunshot, and the subsequent rush of adrenalin that flooded through his bloodstream practically numbed all feeling of the bullet’s impact into the Kevlar protecting his back.

“Son of a bitch-” He jerked upwards.

“Don’t!” Red hissed, placing an arm over his chest and holding him down. “It’s Poin-”

“Yeah, sociopathic Hawkeye. I got it.” He tried to get up again, but Red kept him pinned to the ground with another hard push.

“What’re you going to do? Smash through the window and fly to the next rooftop for round two?”

“Do you want a punch to the ribs?” Frank grit out.

“He nearly murdered me with school supplies,” Red went on, voice unfamiliarly shaky, “How much damage do you think he’ll be able to do with a gun?”

“For his sake he better hope it’s more damage than I can.”

“Why are you so goddamn arrogant?” Red cursed under his breath, “Look, you go out there, you die.”

Frank moved a hand to the gun holstered at his back. Red wasn’t making Frank’s aim was to get him out of this at all costs any easier. He seemed set on the both of them making it out together. It was a testament to the kid’s skill that he’d lived this long with that kind of mindset. Very few got away with being that soft or sweet in this world.

“We wait here we both die.” Frank growled.

Red twitched, then gnawed worryingly at his lip. It was a little manipulative, on Frank’s part – playing on the fears and panic running rampant at the back of Red’s mind. But he needed Red to let up so he could draw the fire.

“Just… Hold, will you?”

Frank glowered up at him, and Red made it clear just how stubborn he was, and just how badly Frank’s tactic was backfiring when he carefully poked his head over the bed.

The bedroom’s windows shattered as more bullets whizzed past. Frank pulled Red back to his chest by his collar, his heart racing. Great. Frank had now gone ahead and managed to trigger the kid’s martyr complex.

“You’re fucking insane, you know that?”

Red grabbed hold of his shoulder, steadying himself, “I – I think he’s below us.”

“And you’re testing this theory by blowing out your last brain cell?”

“He’s ricocheting the bullets.” Red breathed.

Frank was shocked into silence at that. To consistently ricochet a bullet with the level of accuracy this guy was managing… The asshole would have to consider the bullet, shape, material, spin, velocity, angle, and an endless list of other variables that made the feat pretty much impossible. If it hadn’t come from Red himself, he’d be hard pressed to believe it.

Red released him.

“Stay down.” He ordered, “He’s by the window, waiting for a better shot. He’s only got three more rounds. I’ll tell you when he reloads, then we go for the front door.”

Without giving Frank the chance to argue, Red grabbed hold of a newspaper on the dresser, then flung it to the air.

Frank watched with his heart in his throat as Red dove into the next room as two more shots sounded. The newspaper settled to the carpet beside Frank, and his nerves settled a little at the sight of two holes punctured through the paper.

Red slowly rose to his feet. For a few moments, Frank could hear nothing but the background panicked shouts from the surrounding units and the faint wail of sirens approaching.

The brief stillness was punctured by the sound of more glass shattering from the living room.

“Go!”

Frank was already on his feet and running for the door before Red had the word out. He followed Red down the hallway and toward the stairwell. Red stopped him at points, holding him in place as police moved between the floors.

They were maybe a floor or two from the ground when Red pushed him back into a hallway.

“What is it?”

“The police just apprehended Poindexter.”

“So, we don’t have to worry about more haywire bullets coming our way. One psychopath less after us.”

Red rolled his head in a round-about approximation of an agreement, “Yeah, well, trouble doesn’t end there. There are police blocking the exits, and more of Fisk’s men waiting for an ambush outside.”

Frank stepped back into the hallway, then began to pace, rubbing angrily at the back of his head. On any other day, he’d happily take on those odds, but Red wasn’t exactly in a state to fight an army right now. He glanced toward the elevator, then approached the doors, and muscled them open.

Red placed a hand on his hip and tilted his head upwards towards the ceiling with a tired sigh, “They’ve shut off the power. That’s not going to work.”

“I’m counting on it.” Frank grit through his teeth.

He looked down the dark abyss of the elevator shaft, letting his eyes adjust until he could make out the thick cables within.

Red joined his side, “There’s another unit coming.”

“NYPD or Fisk’s goons?” Frank asked, half tempted to go out shooting if it was the latter.

Frank wasn’t sure if it was how he’d intoned the question or if Red just knew him well enough to read that line of thought, but he cut off any chance of that argument with a sharp, “Doesn’t matter. This’ll work. We should go.”

Frank looked him up and down, “You can still climb shit, right?”

“I’m not a cripple.” Red grumbled, petulant, before he began making his way down into the black pit below.

Frank followed suit, albeit a little less gracefully in comparison. Red made it to the basement floor first and was attempting to wedge open the door with little success. Frank dropped down heavily beside him and forced it open with far more ease, then gestured with an open arm for Red to pass through. Red’s jaw went tight, but he entered the parking garage without comment.

“They have patrols set up around the perimeter.” Red noted, “They’re moving in.”

Frank’s brows rose, “Where were you three weeks ago when my military radio broke?”

Red’s reply was interrupted by the screech of rubber against smooth concrete floor as a sedan pulled out of a parking space and Frank watched as the kid confidently strode forward into the pathway of the car.

“Red!”

The sedan screeched to a halt, then a loud blare filled the garage as the driver abused the shit out of his horn.

“Christ!”

Red approached the car door, yanking it open before he punched the man inside across his temple. The guy flopped like a sack of bricks, knocked out cold.

Frank observed the whole scene with a high level of intrigue, both baffled by Red’s total lack of self-preservation and shocked by choir boy’s sudden apathetic actions.

“That wasn’t very catholic of you.”

Red pulled the body from the driver’s seat and laid him across the sidewalk.

They both jumped when a stray bullet pierced through the car’s side mirror, the both of them instinctively diving for cover.

“Get in!” Red hissed.

Frank didn’t need to be told twice. He leapt up and slid over the car’s hood, before pulling open the passenger door and jumping in. Red was already buckling in, before he belatedly realised just which seat he’d settled into.

“Frank, we need to switch.” He pointed out; words rushed.

Frank waved him off, checking instead that his handgun was loaded, “You drive, I’ll lay down some cover.”

Red was rendered speechless for a moment, “I don’t know if you’ve worked this out yet, but _I can’t actually see_, Frank!”

“Not an idiot, Red. You think I don’t know that?”

“So, you want me to kill both of us?”

They both jolted as another bullet smashed through the windshield. They didn’t have time to argue about this.

“_Fuck_, this is insane.” Red growled, then turned the keys to the engine and wound down the window.

“What’re you doing?”

“You want me to drive, I need to see.”

\------------------------------

_Okay. _Matt just needed to breathe. The vehicle was already on. That’s half the job done, right? This was doable. He racked his mind for memories of Elektra. Of their dumb joyrides in fast, expensive (likely stolen) cars… Release the handbrake, put the car into drive - he knew that much.

He wiggled the gearstick around, trying and failing to find the right gear, when Frank reached across and placed his hand over Matt’s. Matt went tense as chills ran up his arm from the point of contact, leaving gooseflesh in their wake as Frank guided them into drive.

They both ducked as another shot crashed through the back window, and propelled by quickly impending footsteps and shouting, Matt ripped his focus away from Frank and slammed his foot into the accelerator.

Frank released a surprised grunt as they were thrust into motion; tires screeching as they were thrown back against their seats. Matt tuned into the squeak of sedan’s tires against the smooth floor, listening closely to the way the soundwaves bounced off the garage’s walls. It was enough to give him the spatial awareness to navigate the tight space without crashing, and paired with being able to direct the car towards the loudest thugs at the entrance, he was able to direct their way out without so much as a peep from Frank.

There was more shouting from Fisk’s thugs stationed outside as they pulled out onto the open road. Frank leaned out the window and sent shots into the fray. They had a brief scuffle as Matt stretched across both their seats to try to yank Frank back into the car. Their wrestling was cut short when Frank inhaled sharply as he turned the only set of eyes in the car to the road ahead.

“Left, Red! Left, left, left!” He bellowed.

Matt ripped the wheel to the left and the wheels went careening across the gravel as the force of the turn pushed them against the side of the car. Frank braced an arm against the door and the roof of the sedan, eyes squeezed shut as the sheer inertia rearranged the contents of his guts. Frank reached across him to realign the wheel, breaths coming hard and fast through his nose.

“_Fuck me!_” Frank growled, “Have you never driven before?”

“What is it about _‘I’m blind’_ that you can’t seem to comprehend?” He bit out.

Trying to drive out of the garage without sight had been a challenge. Racing through the open streets of Hell’s Kitchen was impossible. Even with the windows down, Matt’s perception was fucked. The combination of the windscreen acting as a flat, cold wall in front of him, the freeze of the wind and rain whipping by, the bullets from new pursuers tearing past, his own heart beating wildly against his chest. It was an avalanche of sensory information, hitting him with a force that ripped his sixth sense to unintelligible shreds. It wasn’t just a question of his senses, either. The roads had signage. A lot of it. Lanes with markings and lights and intersections and subtle turn signals for cars way ahead that Matt had zero chance of identifying through all the other background noise screaming at him. 

Frank reloaded his handgun, then leaned back out the window and gifted their pursuers with a deluge of bullets. Matt took note of a burst tire or two before Frank pulled himself back inside. Frank then made an aborted noise of alarm that Matt didn’t have a chance to decipher before he was colliding into the car in front’s rear end. The impact caused them both to fly forward, though where Matt was caught by his seatbelt, Frank’s head slammed into the dashboard.

Frank recovered quickly, with the only evidence of him being shaken a quiet release of breath he’d been holding. He took hold of the wheel and steered around what Matt could only assume were the other cars on the road, guiding them through a few blocks before merging onto a road that felt more open to Matt than the tight streets they’d just travelled.

The back window cracked as another bullet flew between them.

“_Shit_.”

“Listen, Red, there’s a set of lights coming up and no one in front of us. Just keep the wheel straight and keep driving.” Frank ordered, then released the wheel, “I’m gonna lay down some more cover.”

Matt tried to process that information as Frank returned to picking off their tails.

“Wha- lights? No, I need your eyes, jackass, fucking direct me!”

By the time he spoke they were already hurtling through the intersection, made evident as an ensemble of vehicles screeched to a halt and a symphony of car horns joined the chorus of already deafening gunfire, shouting and rubber against asphalt. By the sounds of things, they were at a truly breakneck speed, wind howling by and the rain pelting in, stinging like ice against Matt’s skin.

Frank blew out the wheels of another car that’d gotten a little too close for comfort. When he returned to check the road, his heartrate spiked.

“Sharp turn, to the right, now Red!” He shouted.

Matt slammed on the brakes and blocked out Frank’s cursing as he performed another break-neck turn, before led-footing the accelerator.

“_Fuck’s sake_,” Frank grumbled, “Could you pick a goddamn speed and stick to it?”

Matt gritted his teeth. That would be great, wouldn’t it? Being able to see how fast you were travelling.

“This vehicle has two speeds. Stop and go. If you want to be an asshole about it, at least try to be a more descriptive asshole.”

Frank twisted around so he could see out of the back window and watch any remaining pursuers as he reloaded.

“Just keep your ears on the road.”

“That would be a hell of a lot easier without all the sirens and gunfire,” Matt snapped back.

“Then stop complaining and let me work on it, wiseass.” He spat, then leaned out the window again and laid down a spray of gunfire.

Matt yelled as a shock of pain erupted from his shoulder.

“Red?” Frank called from outside, “You alright?”

He tried to respond but found his mouth dry and words at his lips shapeless. Matt blinked, steadying the steering wheel with one hand and pressing the other to his bleeding arm.

“Red! Hey, answer me!”

Matt was barely able to take note of the sound of police sirens wailing in the distance through the loud jackhammering of Frank’s heart; worlds faster than Matt had ever heard before. Which was really saying something, because most of Matt’s encounters with Frank involved gunfire and explosions.

Once again proving Matt’s point, a deafening blast sounded from behind them, causing him to jolt violently in his seat. Only then did Frank settle back into the car and lean over to Matt’s side. His presence was more so distracting than it was helpful, and Matt briefly released his free hand from the bleeding at his shoulder to push him away.

“Alright, alright. Just slow down. We’ll turn into the next alley.”

Matt followed his instruction, if only to end this hellride. As soon as the sedan pulled to a halt, Frank practically fell out of the car in his rush to get out. Matt released his grip from the wheel and swallowed thickly, resting his head back against the driver’s seat. _Never again. _

He straightened when Frank opened Matt’s door. Frank reached in and grabbed him by the collar, and before he could protest Matt was being tugged upwards into the rain. Frank pushed him against the car, then inspected the relatively superficial wound at his shoulder. The pain there was only a dull throb now.

“It’s just a graze-”

He was cut off when Frank closed the space between them, and Matt was hit with a sudden rush of panic and confusion as he was filled with the smell, feel and taste of Frank. He was drenched, yet every point of skin to skin contact was blazing warm. Matt subconsciously arched into it, grabbing a handful of Frank’s jacket to balance himself against the dizzying effect of Frank’s lips slanted against his.

Frank pressed into him hard and rough, as though if the contact between them was broken then so too would the moment. He kissed with a determination that was intoxicating, it ached all the way through to the core of Matt. All he could do was hold on and pretend he wasn’t drowning.

Far too soon, Frank pulled away, and Matt became aware of how freezing it was, the area that Frank warmed now vacant and exposed.

Frank cleared his throat, lowered his eyes, then turned and walked away, leaving Matt with only one thought in mind.

_What the fuck was that?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very sorry this has been on hiatus for so long. Much love to those that kept revisiting the work. Your messages of encouragement helped motivate me return to it. 
> 
> So, you may be reading this thinking Frank is right there, why wouldn’t he drive? Surely having the seeing man control the vehicle as well as shoot over his shoulder is a more practical solution. And I’d just like to say, you’re one hundred percent correct, and valid. But this is my fic, so you’re just going to have to suffer. Because I haven’t achieved my dreams or reached peak chaotic story telling until I let Matt drive.


	15. Chapter 15

The walk back to the Lieberman household was… awkward, to say the least. Not to mention cold. And wet.

The adrenaline had long disappeared from his system, leaving Matt to a half-asleep state – his ribs and lungs complaining from a long day of action and a dull ache pulsating through his skull. He felt uncoordinated and lethargic, his spatial awareness meandering at the peripherals. Even still, he made a conscious effort to maintain a respectable distance between him and Frank.

Frank seemed content for the moment to not address what had happened, and Matt himself was too confused to know the best way to do so.

_Why?_ That was the question that plagued Matt. Why did he feel the need to attack Poindexter that night? Why did he waste his time, saving Matt’s life? Why did he give him a place to hide and heal? Why had he kissed... Why had he done any of it?

Curiosity. That was the word he’d once given Matt. Like he had pulled him from that graveyard less out of sympathy and more so out of an intrigue for how much more pain and suffering Matt could possibly go through. In fact, he probably enjoyed the thrill of having someone capable of causing the Punisher a curve-ball now and then.

They both should have died countless times over. So, maybe he just liked seeing someone with a life as depressing as his own… Though that still didn’t explain why Frank had gone and… had gone to that extent.

Very quietly, something burst from a long buried, abandoned recess of his mind.

_Someone likes you. Someone cares about you. Maybe they won’t leave this time._

The moment he recognised the voice, Matt shut that shit down. Stamped down on the ache in his chest and locked down the concept so tightly that it had no hope of popping into his thoughts again. Then resolutely decided to pretend that it hadn’t escaped the vault he’d shoved it into in the first place.

It was illogical, after all. At best, Frank saw Matt as a nuisance. How could he possibly like Matt when he wasn’t really that attached to the idea of him living in the first place.

Curiosity. _I was curious_. Those were Frank’s words. Like Matt was some sort of science experiment yet to validate Frank’s hypothesis.

Was this some sort of test, then?

He wouldn’t put the idea past him. Though, that didn’t exactly explain Frank’s strange behaviour of late. The moments of softness amongst their usual timeline of chaos. The feeling of big, gentle yet firm hands massaging through his hair. Those same deft fingers stitching him up. The way he’d taken up situating himself between Matt and the rest of the world when it became all too overwhelming-

No. Stop it. Not going there.

He and Frank were still going through the process of mourning. Frank likely missed his wife. Matt could tell that much from their embarrassing interaction at Melvin’s workshop. They both had a lot of pent-up energy and emotional baggage. Yes. That was it. That made sense. Frank needed a release of tension, and when he saw that he was injured he somehow accidentally ended up going in for a kiss instead of a punch. Understandable. Matt figured he could allow it. Just this once. One-sided and transactional. He owed Frank that much.

“Hey!”

Matt jumped, then blinked, before realising his thoughts had pulled him to a stop.

“You coming?” Frank called impatiently. “Why are you walking so slowly? I’m freezing my balls off here.”

Matt wet his lips, then lengthened his stride until he and Frank were side-by-side, “Are we going to talk about it?”

Frank rubbed at his lips almost self-consciously.

“About killing Poindexter? Sure, I’m up for the discussion.”

He frowned. That was a clear deflection if Matt had ever heard one.

“That’s not-“

Matt sighed. Why should he be the one to bother? Why was this shit always his responsibility when he was about as eager to push the subject as Frank was?

“Can you at least make a solid decision about whether you want me to kill or not? I’m starting to feel nauseous from all this flip-flopping.”

“I was talking about me, not you, smartass.”

“Does it make you feel better? Killing them?”

Matt could’ve said it disdainfully. With resentment and contempt dripping from his voice. Would’ve done so, if he and Frank were still on that rooftop. If they were still in that courtroom. But that may as well have been a lifetime ago. Now, Matt could only ask the question with sincerity. Because he needed to know. Because there needed to be something. Anything capable of filling that dark, hollow pit inside that seemed to never stop expanding.

Frank’s heart was steady. His breathing calm. But for a long time, he failed to reply.

Just when Matt thought he’d moved on from trying to answer at all, he spoke.

“Better… It uh.”

Frank swallowed.

“Better doesn’t really come into the equation…”

Matt doesn’t say anything, but he must’ve looked expectant, because Frank continued without prompt.

He cleared his throat, hesitant, “You see, I’m not looking for peace of mind Red. I’ve already sunk to the bottom. There’s no coming up for air… But hunting. Killing. Giving the scum of this earth what they deserve. That there is a purpose. And as long as I have that, I’m not drowning anymore, you know? I’m still underwater, but I’m swimming straight up… I’m never going to hit the surface, but that doesn’t really matter so long as I have the direction.”

Matt didn’t know if he was strong enough for that. If there was even a hint of an element of truth to Frank’s words… How did he do it? How did he live, day after day, unable to breathe.

He looked down, letting the rain fall from his chin. 

“You’re shivering.”

“Hm?” If he wasn’t already distracted - mind firing off at about a million miles a minute - his body was making it even more difficult for Matt to assess himself by having gone completely numb. Though, now that Frank had pointed it out, it seemed hard to ignore, his entire frame shaking under the biting chill of the rain.

Frank opened up his jacket, offering Matt to come join him.

Matt stopped, the furrow between his brows deepening.

“What?” Frank grumbled, “I’m not looking after you if you get sick again.”

Perhaps Frank had a point. Perhaps Matt was too tires to argue. Perhaps he just didn’t want to spend another second shaking in the wind. Whatever the reason, Matt complied, shuffling under Frank’s arm and soaking in the limited amount of shared body heat he was able to gather there.

\----------------------------------------

Frank was heading upstairs to catch up on some sleep when he was stopped by the faint noise of conversation coming from the kitchen. The sound of Red’s voice is what pulled him to a halt as he instinctively plastered himself to the wall.

“Mind explaining what happened today, then?” David asked.

Christ if Frank knew. His mind kept replaying the scene, over and over. Frank had been caught off guard. It had been the perfect storm of adrenaline, concern, and bottled-up emotion that Frank hadn’t even been aware of himself until he had Red under his hold, striking him simultaneously, causing him to surge forward without thinking.

Frank had never experienced nothing like it before. He was usually so calm and composed under any form of pressure. So much so that Maria had used to call him out for being cold. Frank had just thought he was being respectful of boundaries.

He should have felt any one of a number of emotions. Guilt. Shame. Embarrassment. And perhaps he did feel those things, just a little. But Red had responded. Quite enthusiastically, too. And Frank didn’t really know what to make of that. It didn’t necessarily mean there any mutual attraction there. Red was, by all accounts, touch-starved. Had probably been so for some time. Regardless of superhuman capabilities, there was only so long one person could isolate themselves from any and all human contact. Frank felt a little slimy for taking advantage of this fact, even if it wasn’t his intention in the moment.

Red released an amused huff, “It’s a long story.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll probably read about it in the news tomorrow morning anyway.”

“Whatever they print, just trust me on this one thing.”

“Hm?”

“You can blame Frank.”

Frank wasn’t sure who he was even bothering to hide from. Red could probably hear him breathing from a mile away.

As David’s laughter slowly died, Frank went to move on and leave the two of them to it when David suddenly murmured something so softly that Frank was barely able to pick it up.

“After everything that’s happened… I’m glad he managed to find someone again.”

Frank went tense.

“Hm? What – who… I’m not following.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

David cleared his throat when Red remained quiet.

“Oh. Shit. I’m sorry, sometimes it’s really hard to remember your blind – … Sorry, that’s not what I meant – I mean, you can’t see that – wait, no, fuck, that’s a shitty thing to say-”

“Okay, okay, just… Stop. Hold it there. There’s no… _finding _of anything.”

David’s babbling fell silent. “So… You and Frank aren’t…“ David’s sentence trailed off, and the room filled with an oppressive silence.

Frank held his breath.

A little too late to sound convincing, Red spluttered before responding, “No! Why would you think that?”

“Wha- it’s nothing… No reason, it’s nothing. I only thought you might have been the better one to ask…”

Frank snorted derisively, feeling a little bitter toward that statement. Little did David know he was talking to a born and raised devout Catholic. Matt had his rules and standards. And even if he no longer abided by the religion, Frank was fairly certain he wasn't ready for whatever the hell David was implicating.

“Thank you again for the dinner, David.” Red said, sounding not all that grateful.

Red’s footsteps approached the corner he was hiding behind, and Frank was about to make himself scarce when the footsteps stopped.

“I don’t know what you saw…” He hesitated, clearing his throat before he tried again, “But, uh… Even if there is something there… It’s frivolous. Nothing serious. He just wants someone to screw around with, that’s all.”

Frank doesn’t expect that to hit as hard as it does. But there’s some part of him that knows the words are just as much directed towards David’s ears as they are to his own.

Red was a dumbass. He hadn’t even been remotely close to hitting the mark. Because in that moment, he hadn’t been thinking at Frank had been afraid. He hadn’t wanted to lose Red. Not only because he’d put this much effort into keeping the little shit alive in the first place, but because he actually cared. And fuck if that revelation hadn’t crashed into him like a truck. Frank had sworn to himself he wouldn’t allow anyone to affect him again like this again. And yet here Murdock was, stubborn. Unyielding. That all-in determination to be just and fair that Frank would’ve called idealism or naivete if he didn’t secretly kind of admire it.

They both went quiet, and for one blissful moment Frank thought that the conversation had ended there, but then David had to respond, “I… I’m not going to pretend I know how to read him. This is Frank we’re talking about. The guy isn’t exactly open about his emotions, unless that emotion is a murderous rage. But, for whatever reason, I know he cares about you.”

In the end, Frank doesn’t confront either of them about it. He has absolutely zero desire or need to do so.

At least, not until the following morning, when Sarah comes to him after David’s left to drop off the kids at school, her eyes wide and newspaper clutched tightly around the morning newspaper.

“Um…”

Frank looked attentively to her.

“So…” She cleared her throat.

Frank frowned, his eyes dropping to the newspaper. What could they have possibly written to make her so distinctively uncomfortable, so hesitant to meet Frank’s eyes?

“I think you two need to see this.”

She then planted the paper firmly down into the middle of the table.

The bottom fell out of Frank’s stomach and his blood pressure dropped so fast that he nearly collapsed. There, on the front page, in black and white, was a screenshot from grainy security footage of Frank and Matt. That, on its own, wouldn’t be that big an issue. But no, this was Frank and Matt, with their lips passionately locked together as Frank pinned him to the side of the car.

Sarah’s watching them, waiting for their reaction, but Frank can’t seem to tear himself away. Red, on the other hand, was still happily crunching away at his cereal, oblivious to the world falling around them.

Matt’s face was hidden, but the suit he was wearing was recognisable from the Devil’s earlier days. Perhaps the only saving grace, was that Karen’s name wasn’t printed in the author’s by-line, but even then, she must’ve seen it by now. Her and everyone else on the goddamn planet. Frank mind ascends from his body for a moment. It almost doesn’t feel real. Like he’s watching himself from third person, floating above them.

Matt took another bite of cereal and chewed away serenely, giving Frank a curious look.

“Sorry, my eyes aren’t too good in the morning,” He smiled around a mouthful, his gaze directed towards Sarah’s general position, “What is it we’re looking at here?”

Frank doesn’t answer. He felt… Well, there was the panic. Obviously. And he had to remind himself that Matt could hear the gears of a safe clicking, which meant that he sure as hell could hear his heartbeat as it thudded loudly against his chest.

He breathed; tried to calm the pulse by skipping right over the panic and moving to a more comforting state of anger toward the invasiveness of it all. This lasts for a few relieving seconds, before he is drowned by a wave of stomach-churning dread that comes with the realization that if Fisk hasn’t seen this, he will. Which means that the knowledge is now out that a) Matt Murdock, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is still alive, and b) Frank Castle, in some way, has a very strong, very manipulable, attachment to him.

Sarah looked at him, stricken, and the silence stretches on, and on, and on, until she finally opened her mouth, which Frank immediately clamped a hand over.

“Yankees won the world series championship.” He said.

Matt raised an eyebrow, then shrugged, “Huh, not a big baseball guy. Does that mean something to you two?”

“Yeah, breaks their like two decade-long drought. Pretty big fucking news. Thanks for letting us know, Sarah.” He said it a little too quickly, a little too dismissively, and Red gives him an odd look, but Frank doesn’t care.

Instead, he ripped the newspaper from the table, rolled it up, then tucked it under his arm and made a hasty escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a long chapter but I was keen to do a follow up after the last. Also, I want to say a big thank you to those who’ve stuck with this fic for so long, it always fills my heart to see commenters from nearly a year ago when I first started this, still posting messages below. To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll ever finish this, but as usual, I’ll do my best to make every chapter an enjoyable ride.
> 
> I like to think about the explosion of social media in response to this. I, for one, would love to see a #thepunishersaidGAYRIGHTS thread.


	16. Chapter 16

If Matt hadn’t known any better, he’d say Frank was purposefully avoiding him.

Ever since he’d stormed off, it’d been difficult for Matt to run into the man. Which was really saying something, taking the size of David’s house into consideration. There weren’t exactly a lot of places for the man to go.

Matt’s ribs ached something fierce, and he’d been wanting to ask Frank to fix some of the stitches he’d torn open. He had ended up having to go to David for help, only to have the man he’d been looking for in the first place go ahead and eavesdrop on them. There was also the case of his strange behaviour this morning. He tried to push Sarah for details, but she was about as forthcoming as she was truthful when it came to the subject. That being; not at all.

It was frustrating enough that Frank had refused to acknowledge what had happened last night. And now, for the first time Matt witnessed the man lying through his teeth.

Having Frank on his mind was becoming a solid wall, blocking his ability to form a coherent plan of action. He couldn’t listen to another second of Poindexter’s tapes. They made it sound like he’d been a killer from a young age. A psychopath integrated into society, intelligent and skilled enough to go by undetected, and just stable enough to find his way into a powerful position. He and Frank had had a chance. They could’ve ended it right there and he blew it. Matt knew Frank was angry about it too.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that though he refused to show his face, his presence permeated every moment of Matt’s consciousness. He could hear the man’s heavy tread creaking against the floorboards and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, couldn’t get the smell of him out of his nose or forget the taste of him on his lips. It was borderline maddening.

He had thought he could handle having Frank as a partner. Even if it just meant keeping him in check for a time. But whatever this was, it’d gone too far. He’d gotten too involved.

Matt needed to get out. Clear his head. And if Matt couldn’t stand being in Frank’s general vicinity for another second, and Frank wasn’t going to face him regardless, then there was neither person nor reason to stop him from leaving.

He slipped away, not really having much of an idea of where he was going. Or for how long he’d be gone. The destination didn’t really matter to Matt. As long as it was anywhere other than here.

As he wandered through the streets, hands shoved deep into his pockets to stave off the bite of the early morning chill, the thought struck him that he had yet to face anyone other than Frank since that night everything had gone to shit at the Bulletin. He’d left hints for Karen and Foggy. Enough to let them know he was still alive. But it’d been a long time since he’d thought to pay a visit to Father Lantom or Sister Maggie.

Matt wasn’t exactly in the Church-going mood. Nonetheless, it wasn’t long before he found himself climbing the familiar steps of his former home.

“I don’t know if I have the strength to get through this.”

He stops at the sound of Sister Maggie’s voice, praying. The words are broken and choked, a desperation in them that reaches only Matt’s ears and settles against him uneasily.

“He’s so stubborn. Full of fury and foolish pride. Please… watch over him.”

She knew he was life? How? Matt wasn’t aware of any public reports about his whereabouts.

“Keep him from making the same damned mistake that took you from us…” She took a shaky breath, then her tone went almost reminiscent. Fond as it was full of sorrow.

“Our son is too much like you, Jack.”

Matt’s blood ran cold.

_No._

Either he lost his footing, or his legs gave out on him altogether, because the next thing Matt knew he was on the ground, reeling.

She had lied. All this time, she had lied.

The realisation felt like bile at the back of his throat. He felt the sudden, manic urge to laugh. Although the feeling could be as easily interpreted as a need to cry, or scream until his voice was hoarse and all the air had left his lungs.

The first thought to pierce through the initial shock of it all, was _how the hell was he so stupid_? How could he not have seen it before?

The second thought to come to him, was the realisation that Father Lantom had known. The old man had known the whole damn time, and he hadn’t done a thing. He’d been content to let Matt suffer thinking he was completely alone in this world all his life, knowing full well that his mother was less than a couple of blocks away.

Matt staggered away from the Church. His feet taking him someplace his mind hadn’t the room to decide on. All he knew was that he couldn’t stand being in the proximity of her presence for another moment, feeling the full force of it all made his stomach clench with nausea.

It meant his father had known too. The person he had idolized, built his own self core. His whole life around. He had lied to him, just like everyone else.

Did it even matter?

That was the truly depressing truth about the revelation.

It didn’t change a goddamn thing, did it?

They both lied. They both left him. Sooner or later. Whether it was due to their egos or their sets of principles. Values or beliefs. God or no God. Through death or abandonment.

It was all the same.

The indescribable sense of betrayal within him goes bitter and cold.

It didn’t matter.

He wasn’t going to be like them. He wasn’t going to let everyone else suffer because he thought it was better for them. Because of some bullshit code. Not anymore.

When he gets to Fisk. He’s going to kill him.

\------------------------------------

In the face of his whole world crumbling to pieces, regardless of his poor physical condition, Matt, naturally, went looking for a fight.

After all, what better way to solve your problem than to make another, more immediate one?

Yeah. He was more rage than reason at this point.

New York was a big city with no shortage of crime, and there were a few hotspots he’d put on the backburner, aware of their regular illegal activity but too busy to prioritise the areas. With no leads on Fisk or Poindexter, he had a gap in his schedule.

Matt waited for the cover of night, then went out on patrol. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

He was drawn into a run-down building by ear – hearing the muffled sounds of screaming from a couple stories above. As Matt scaled the building, he caught onto the low murmur of voices conversing in a foreign language he didn’t understand. Matt’s best guess was that they were belonging to either the Croatian or Albanian mob.

If Matt were being honest, who these people were or where they were from didn’t concern him. If this was a human trafficking operation, it was a simple case of them being unfortunate enough to pick the wrong night to carry out their work. Matt would gladly use the excuse to release some of the rage and bitterness boiling within him.

The girls were guarded by two men, which Matt was able to dispatch with relative ease. If he was a little more ferocious than usual… Well, no one was going to cry over a couple of sex traffickers’ broken bones. He broke open the lock and directed the distressed, teary women towards the closest exit. They didn’t need telling twice.

Matt was nowhere near done here. Sensing others in the building, he went to the next floor.

He cocked his head, reaching out his senses, only to be met with a dull static from one side. Matt frowned, then smacked his right ear a couple of times.

_Come on. Don’t blank out now. _

A growl of frustration bubbled up from him and he shook his head. Of all the fucking times-

Matt was too impatient to wait it out, so he goes ahead, relying on his one good ear in combination with his smell and the vibrations shuddering through the building to navigate his way to his enemies. He can identify that each is armed, but should he go in hard and get up into their close quarters fast enough, he should be fine. May as well just count it as practise for when he next encounters Poindexter.

He took them by surprise alright. Managed to disarm two immediately, and the others had half the mind to not try and shoot through their allies. The first issue came when he realised his sensory capacities were too sloppy to locate each person in the room, and he was forced to only focus on one attacker at a time.

He came to understand relatively quickly that he was vastly outnumbered. He wasn’t fighting smart, either. All in all, Matt was pretty sure he was losing. Not that it mattered. Not when every punch felt like relief. Replaced the pain writhing inside him with something physical. Something real and tangible. His heartbeat pounded in his ears over the rushing of adrenaline through his veins. This is what he was born to do.

He felt a fist pummel into his solar plexus, and Matt doubled over in pain as the air was forced from his lungs. Another asshole must’ve taken advantage of his weakened guard, because the next thing he’s aware of is a shearing shard of pain through his side. His knees buckled, and before he can gather his bearing he’s been tackled around the waist and bodily lifted from the ground.

A shockwave reverberated through Matt’s backbone as he returned to the earth with a loud _thump_. He wheezed, his equilibrium blurring for a moment.

He tried to suck air back into his lungs as he scrambled backward, but he was too slow. There were too many of them.

Matt’s flailing arms were weighed down, and he was left gasping against the cold concrete, chest rising and falling from the floor erratically. There was an intensifying burn at his side that Matt was gradually identifying as a stab wound, and his still-healing ribcage ached under the pressure of being sandwiched between two heavy men and the hard floor. Worse than this though, was the assholes surrounding him, laughing at his attempts at escape.

One of them yelled something that sounded more like an order than a curse, and suddenly there was a hand wrapped around his mask.

Realising where this was going, Matt bucked upwards with renewed vigour. Though, his efforts were ultimately futile. The fabric was ripped from his head.

In a last-ditch attempt to hide his identity, Matt pressed his face into the floor. He got in a few puffs of air, his breaths disturbing the dust beneath him, before a hand grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced his head up roughly and Matt could only squeeze his eyes shut as they inspected his face. 

\--------------------------------------

Red’s sudden disappearance was… mildly alarming.

Mildly, because he couldn’t exactly call it a fully-fledged disappearance. Not when he’d already inserted a tracker into the underside of Red’s boot long ago – someplace too thick for his sensitive skin to detect. He hadn’t wanted to encroach on his privacy, but after the fiasco at the graveyard, Frank’s paranoia took precedent over Red’s pretence for secrecy.

Couldn’t hurt to have a heads up if Red had the mind to become an interfering pain in the ass during one of his missions either.

Frank was still trying to wrap his head around when exactly his acceptance of Red as one hell of a nuisance had transformed into a fondness and affection for the little shit. He couldn’t deny being at least a little pissed – hurt, even - that he’d been ran out on. He was as confused and frustrated as Red when it came to where they were trying to go with all this. Though he accepted that how things had gone down were in large part, his responsibility. It wasn’t an outright rejection. In fact, it could be how Red dealt with his own bafflement, or perhaps he was dropping a not-so subtle hint for Frank to back off and never try anything like that ever again. The combination of what he’d said to David and his sudden disappearance was about as clear as Red could’ve been with him.

And Frank had been content to give him his space. He knew just how maddening it was to have someone digging into your business when you wanted nothing but time to sort through shit on your own. But he hadn’t spent all this time avoiding Red, think their whole situation over, to suddenly be unable to speak with him about it in person.

Still, Frank waited for his return.

He knew it wasn’t a smart idea to seek the man out. He needed Red amicable enough that Frank could try and explain himself, so that they could move past whatever roadblock they’d hit here. And in terms of the sensitivity of the topic, Frank knew tracking the man down wasn’t going to help his case.

But as he waited on the porch, freezing his ass off, and watched as the sun began to fall below the horizon, the urge to find Red just so he could dropkick his ass strengthened.

If Red wasn’t going to come back, it more than likely meant he was going out to do this thing on his own. And between the workshop explosion and his faulty super-senses and the chaos that was last night, he was more likely to get himself killed than do any meaningful damage to Fisk.

Which was how he found himself, armed and ready for a fight, following the red blinking icon on his GPS.

He knew he was on the right track when he encountered about a dozen young women coming out of the building at a full sprint - their tear-streaked faces and limited amount of clothing indicating that they weren’t coming out of the decrepit structure for a midnight stroll. 

He inspected the building. It looked like it’d been abandoned half-way through its reconstruction, scaffolding still surrounding the outside.

“Found a real shit-hole to stir up some trouble, Red.” Frank murmured.

Frank entered through the front door, gun at the ready. He had zero pity for sex traffickers. And as good an ally Red could be, he was grateful for the opportunity to dispatch any scumbags he found without choir boy overlooking his shoulder or punching the weapon from his hands.

The hallways were cold and dark as hell, the entire building’s electricity cut. All Frank had to do was follow the sound of a generator, or any sign of heat or light, and he’d find the cockroaches. The place was perfect for Red. And as Frank went floor by floor, retracing Red’s steps, he clearly saw the areas he’d been having a field day with. Red seemed to be feeling extra vicious today, and Frank wondered briefly if that had anything to do with him. Regardless, he felt neither guilt nor sympathy for the fuckers.

His attention was drawn to the sound of gunfire that seemed to be coming from the story above, and Frank hopped up the stairwell two steps at a time, speeding toward the sounds of a fight.

Light emitted from a room toward the end of the hallway, and Frank approached carefully, keeping to the shadows. He peaked his head around the corner to find two men atop of Red, forcing him into the ground. One of them has their hands fisted into his hair, and that in itself is enough to make Frank’s blood boil. But then they yank his head up, and Frank froze, his eyes stuck on Red’s unmasked face, bloody and bruised.

“… Who the hell are you?” One of the men asked in heavily accented English.

Murdock was lucky. He was no Tony Stark. He was a nobody lawyer from a small firm that was no longer even in business. These assholes weren’t about to recognise him.

Frank cocked his gun, preparing to burst in there, when Matt spoke out a hoarse, “_Don’t_.”

The man with his hand in Red’s hair laughed in his face, “What’d you say, dipshit?”

Frank knows the word was directed toward him, but he refused to watch human dirt treat Red like this for another second. He entered into the room; gun raised.

“_Frank don’t_.”

Red catching a bullet at this range would be bad, but if his tone was any indicator, the complaints he’d receive from choir boy if he dared kill anyone in the room would be infinitely worse. And that was if he agreed to actually talk to him.

Frank’s trigger finger twitched, and that single moment of hesitation was enough for the men to scramble.

“Put the gun down!”

Frank’s eyes were locked on the knife suddenly placed up against Red’s throat.

“Hey!” He roared, his vision centralized on the sharp point at Matt’s jugular, “You touch him, I’ll kill you! You hear me?”

“Lights, Frank.” Matt gritted out.

Frank briefly glimpsed toward Red’s face, confused, before his eyes rose to the single light bulb hanging above them.

He got it.

Two rapid-fire gunshots rang out as Frank shot the hand holding the knife against Red’s throat, then lifted the gun to the ceiling and destroyed the light.

The room went pitch black, lit only by the flashes of gunfire, and Frank dived to the closest cover.

He couldn’t see shit, the flashes of light making it impossible for Frank’s eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. There was shouting, then someone caught him around the waist.

Frank flinched, ready to throw a punch towards the source of contact, when Red’s voice pierced through the deafening noise of gunfire. Frank automatically relaxed into his touch, and allowed Red to pull him away from the cover and into the next room.

That’s when the floor gave out.

Almost on instinct, Frank pulled Red against him, falling backward and taking the brunt of the impact. He groaned, taking a moment to reacquaint himself with his surroundings. Red recovered a fraction faster, moving away from him and taking a moment to breathe.

Frank got up and brushed off the dirt, dust and bits of plaster stuck to him, only to find Red already making his way out of the room.

He didn’t look good. And when Frank caught up with him, halfway down the hallway, Red’s breath hitched suddenly, almost imperceptibly, his teeth gritting together against the likely rising discomfort.

He wasn't sure what possessed him to make a grab for the other man, because he'd been doing his best so far to not initiate any contact. Not when Red hated being smothered, his senses too strong. Yet, he took hold of Red’s wrist and pulled him into the nearest room. Frank was aware that he was geared up, muscles taught and blood pumping. He just needed to know Red was there for a second, and somehow this translates into Frank backing him against the wall.

He should’ve anticipated the forearm at his throat, threatening to crush his windpipe.

What he couldn’t have predicted was when Red flipped their positions, forcing Frank’s back into the wall behind him, the arm falling from his throat, allowing him to breathe but holding him in place. Without the mask to hide away his eyes, there was no hiding the wild fury. There was something deeper there too, dark and intense and focused. Red looked the part of a madman on a mission, and Frank’s anger stutters momentarily, giving way to confusion.

The pressure against his chest increased as Red leaned into him and angled his head until Frank could feel his breaths hot against his neck.

Not knowing what exactly Red was playing at, Frank froze, his breath catching and stomach coiling in a painfully pleasant kind of way.

There was a part of him that hated this. Hated how much he enjoyed the feeling of Matt against him. Hated that the asshole was entirely unaffected by this (because there was no way what Frank was feeling could be mutual), and yet could probably detect the smallest minutia of Frank’s reactions. Hated how his instincts screamed to protect. To put his life in front of Frank’s own. It was wrong. So precariously close to becoming something dangerous. Because if there was one pattern Frank Castle has learnt - a single truth that had ran constant throughout his life, it was that people he developed emotional attachments to didn’t tend to live very long.

“Matt.” He growled, and fuck, that didn’t sound threatening at all. It came out breathless, needy, and Frank would like very much for Red to release him so he could sink into the ground and stay there for a couple hundred millennia.

Red doesn’t back off though. In fact, his previous theory that Red wouldn’t possibly be capable of moving even an inch closer was shattered when he pressed in further, edging on a little too hard as he forced his thigh between his legs.

That alone made his brain short out, leaving him unable to focus on anything until Red’s grip tightened, fingers curling into his collar and pulling it down. Then, he could think of nothing but the contrast of the tingling sensation of Red’s stubble compared to the suppleness of his lips, both brushing lightly against the junction between Frank’s shoulder and neck.

Red found the pulse there far too quickly. He closed the heat of his mouth around it, sucking, and suddenly everything became much too loud, the blood rushing past his ears and descending straight to his groin.

Red wasn’t even moving his leg, and yet Frank could do nothing put cling helplessly at his back, mind for once blissfully blank.

His heartbeat was going off like a damn jackhammer, the loud rhythmic drowning out the rest of the world around them. There’s a small part of him that was still in awe that _Matt had initiated this_, and perhaps that should’ve been a red flag within itself, because surely that was a sign that something was wrong with him.

Frank would've been satisfied if this was all Red did, the insane heat on his throat sending tingles down his entire body. Eventually though, he feels his self-control slipping. The pressure became too much, near painful, and he writhed, pure instinct driving his hips upwards, trying desperately to establish some friction between them.

Red’s lips pulled away, and he shivered as his over-sensitive skin was exposed to the cool night air. Frank tried to look down at him, but Matt pressed harder into him, the arm braced across his chest holding strong until he stilled.

He got what this was. Red was in charge here. Not the other way around. Message fucking received.

He couldn’t hold in the groan that slipped from his lips when his collarbone was met with the minimal scrape of Red’s teeth, and everything within him clenched, heat coiling low in his stomach. Frank scrambled for something to hold onto, his hands finding the fabric at Matt’s sides.

He needed skin, and when Red went on without protest, Frank went a little further, managing to slip a hand beneath the hem of his shirt. The drag of Red’s lips paused for a moment, considering whether this breached his own permitted level of intimacy (and fucking Christ, Frank had no idea what the boundaries were here), before he continued, tolerating it.

Red was incredibly distracting, but Frank was brought out of it a little by the trembling he could feel beneath his fingertips. The shuddering movement of Matt’s ribs as he breathed.

Somehow this was the thing that woke up the currently dormant logical division of his brain, and suddenly a barrage of _bad idea, wrong place, wrong time _and _not here, not now _was blaring between his ears. Not only because they were in hostile territory and could be interrupted by men bursting in and shooting them at any moment, but more importantly, because while Matt had started this - holding him solidly against the wall, Frank couldn’t rid the feeling that he himself was the one that had backed him into a corner.

Because though Red had never pulled away or outright rejected him, he hadn’t exactly shown any hints of his own personal attraction prior to now. And just because Matt was the one leaning in close and pressing into him, didn’t necessarily mean that he was interested in any form of reciprocation. Made clear by his refusal at the slightest suggestion of Frank providing anything remotely pleasurable for him.

His brief line of rational thought was interrupted when the careful pressure at his groin moved, sending a shock that rippled across his entire body before shooting downwards and making his toes clench.

He slammed his head back against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut as he tried his damnest to choke back the noises threatening to erupt from his throat. Despite his best efforts, a sound still manages to escape – so low and hoarse that he wasn’t sure Red could hear it at all. Red broke any hope of that being a reality with a sudden stutter in response to the sound, and Frank doesn’t know why he had bothered to doubt those ears in the first place. Of course he could hear him. He always could.

Not that Frank could really find it within himself to care at that moment. The only thing that currently processed through his ruined mind being the horribly wonderful friction, Red’s firm body pressed up against him, and the sound of his own stuttering breaths.

As Matt established some semblance of a rhythm, Frank realised just how badly he needed this. To have someone warm and alive and who he trusted. Someone who knew him. Knew he was a monster. Knew that being with Frank meant being neck deep in blood and bullets and shit. It was something he’d never been able to make peace foregoing when he still had a family, but with Matt… He was right there with him. It felt impossibly good. To be able to relinquish his tight gripped control, even for a moment.

The small movement was a perfect balance between too much and not enough, driving him helplessly in search of more. Red didn’t seem interested in progressing whatever this was into further territory though, leaving Frank trapped to rock his body off the wall in an effort to feel more of Matt against him.

Matt gave a pained grunt and his breathing went a little choppy. Frank frowned, his hand instinctively going to where he knows Red’s side is bruised darkest. Having to hold Frank up for this long was hurting him.

He wondered if there was a way to say _I don’t want to hurt you _without sounding condescending.

Whatever sound he could’ve hoped to make was muffled by Red slapping a palm over his mouth.

Matt then slipped his free hand under the waistband of his jeans – and _jesus, when had he found the time to undo his belt?_ – and began to stroke him through the fabric of his boxers. This elicited a shockwave of pleasure, the electricity crackling across his body and crackling at his fingertips, and Frank removed one of his hands from beneath Matt’s shirt and slammed it into the wall as he shuddered. He wasn't sure how long it took to reach the edge, but he felt it building with the faintest sense of disbelief, not wanting it to end but having no choice in the matter.

Despite feeling the pressure building, climax took him by surprise. His fingers tightened around Matt’s side, nails digging into the bare skin there as he convulsed. The hand he’d had pressed to the wall hand flew to the back of Matt's head as he felt the man bite hard into the junction of his neck in response, threading through the strands of hair he found there.

Matt didn’t move away immediately. Frank wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t want to, or because Frank had all but collapsed against him, the sound of his delayed groan smothered by Red’s hand.

He pulled his palm away, and as Frank came down, muscles shaking, he was struck with self-awareness of how stupid this was. Frank rutting against Matt like a hormonal teenager. Red himself was scarily still, the hand at his waist holding him up almost awkwardly, not pulling away but also refusing to look at him. His head ducked down so there was no way of reading him. Though there were very few plans Frank could think of that Red could’ve had in mind before he went ahead and ruined him.

Frank still had one hand curled into hair and the other firmly found its way around the other Red's waist. Frank pulled a little so Red could keep his head rested against him, but maintained enough distance for Frank to reach between them and return the favour. Before he could so much as graze a hand over his belt buckle, Matt caught him, latching onto his wrist with the same iron grip he had used to keep him up against the wall. This time, Frank felt it – the sudden live-wire tension that overtook Matt, and the unsettled feeling that had been bothering him ever since Red had instigated whatever the hell this was returned with a vengeance.

Something was wrong. Something wasn’t adding up.

Frank whipped back, pushing Red away and examining him from head to toe. Frank went cold when he realised that he appeared entirely detached from the situation at hand, expression impassive; guarded. His eyes holding the look of a thousand-yard stare that had nothing to do with Matt being blind.

“We’ve got to move.”

It was as if only a moment ago they’d been discussing the weather - said so casually that Frank had to repeat the phrase a couple of times over in his head before he was able to understand what Matt meant, and by then, he was already pulling away like nothing had even happened.

He walked towards the exit and crouched low, waiting for Frank to follow. Frank blinked at him, mystified.

Frank had no clue how the asshole could be so nonchalant about the whole thing, especially when Frank was the opposite. Left frozen at the wall - a flustered, lost mess, trying to calm the frantic beating at his chest.

He swallowed thickly, before doing what he could do to pick up the pieces and put himself back together. He could go through the physical movements – pulling up his pants, redoing his belt, rubbing a hand over the marks at his throat. But there was no fixing the hollow pit growing in his chest.

_What the fuck was that?_

Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t mutual. Red hadn’t even bothered to give him a second look (or a head tilt that qualified as one of his looks). There was something off about his stance that had nothing to do with any injury – shaky and tense where he was usually composed and fluid. Frank didn’t know how he hadn’t noticed it before. What was perhaps, most telling, was that there was no argument from him. Not a single complaint or word to say about Frank jumping in on his business again. Not even to try and ease the heavy tension between them. Red was being about as quiet and compliant as Frank had always wanted him to be. It was fucking unnerving. It felt wrong.

He’d been gone for less than twenty-four hours.

_What kind of fuckery could have occurred between then and now?_

Possibly the worst part of all this, is that Frank hadn’t even questioned it. Hadn’t said a thing all throughout Red’s ministrations. And now he couldn’t even look at the asshole without feeling thick shame well up in his throat.

He could only follow Red, and spend the time in the terribly awkward silence of his company racking his brain for an explanation.

_Frivolous. Nothing serious. He just wants someone to screw around with._

Matt’s conversation with David the night prior came rushing to the forefront, and Frank has no way of dismissing it.

Why did the words make him feel so guilty about it, when it wasn’t even him that had initiated in the first place?

He rubbed angrily at the back of his head, knowing the answer but not wanting to acknowledge the truth.

At the time it was happening he was just so desperate to be touched, to make any sort of connection at all. Anything to take the edge off the isolation he felt gnawing away at him.

And perhaps that was why the words kept resonating in his head. Again, and again like a curse.

_Nothing serious. _

Their relationship had never been anything but that. If there ever was a description for what was going on between them, serious was probably as accurate as you were going to get. As enemies or allies, to an almost unhealthy proportion, he and Red had a distinct aversion to interacting with moderation.

_Frivolous. Temporary. Trivial. _

Frank’s fingers twitched. He could still feel the phantom of Matt’s trembling, flushed skin against them. Was that what that was? Matt appealing to what he thought Frank wanted? As if Frank were an animal with no motivation beyond his basest instinct.

_He just wanted someone to screw around with_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew okay I’m sorry Matt’s really going through it in this chapter… but honestly when is he not sorry dude.
> 
> PSA that the alternative title that this fic is saved in my docs under is “i can’t believe you keep doing this to yourself”, which is right under “dunna dun dun dun another one bites the dust”, but above “sometimes i wish i was jared, 19” and “this is pointless”. There is also of course the incomplete Mandalorian fic I’ve been failing to work on - “sir that’s my emotional support found family trope” and I’ve completely given up on “another unfinished shit” and a document that I apparently haven’t checked for two years which is only labelled as “stop”.


	17. Chapter 17

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

Matt breathed unevenly, his stomach threatening to upturn at any moment.

The pain at his side was worsening with each consecutive step, overtaking any sensation of the residual ache of his chest. His body was on autopilot – physically, psychologically and emotionally shattered.

Matt got the impression that if he were to stop, he wouldn’t be able to move again.

None of that mattered to him.

He couldn’t focus on much of anything other than the irregular cadence of a heartbeat fluttering a step behind him.

Frank was there. Somehow, he was always there. Present at the very worst of Matt’s moments.

Everyone had already left. Why was Frank still here? Why wasn’t Matt able to drive him away?

He’d got to thinking that maybe the kiss hadn’t been enough for Frank. Or had just spurred him on further, to the point that he wouldn’t leave Matt alone until he’d gotten the release he wanted. The only way it made sense to Matt was that he’d still wanted something. And maybe if Matt gave him what he wanted; he’d drop the façade. He’d stop pretending he was worth sticking around for.

He’d leave Matt too.

_Why are you still following me?_

“What?”

Matt blinked at the response, realising after a moment that he must’ve voiced that last thought.

Matt was too focused on putting one foot after another to pull together a coherent reply.

“Fuck, Red. I had an inkling you hated my guts but today’s been a real eye-opener of how low you think of me.”

Matt’s shoulders tensed, the dark pit at the bottom of his stomach widening. He should be well acquainted with this sort of pain. Experienced in battle, or when his father died, or when he finally learned the truth about his mother. He’d lived through worse hurts than this. Maybe this was the cascading, delayed effect of the accumulation of all of them, finally settling against his back, crushing him into the dirt. But, for the life of him, Matt couldn’t remember such an encompassing ache that hit him in that moment.

Matt winced and finally dropped a hand to the stab wound he’d been neglecting at his side, his footsteps faltering.

“Red-”

He wanted to go back. Wanted to be able to have some awkward talk about their situation, to bicker and argue on a rooftop. Matt wanted to turn back time. Undo things. Go back to their old relationship, before the car-chase, before David and his family, before that night in the graveyard.

How had this happened? How had he let this go so far? Get this bad?

“Red!”

Frank grabbed hold of his wrist, pulling him backwards. The moment his forward equilibrium was interrupted, Matt collapsed like a house of cards.

“_Shit_.”

Frank caught him beneath his arms, and Matt could barely breathe out a protest at the way it pulled at his cuts and bruises.

He was lowered to the floor, his shirt lifted, exposing the new bruises that’d joined the old, as well as the deep knife wound embedded into his side.

The heartbeat hovering above him did another little jump as fingers carefully edged their way around the damage.

“Jesus Christ, were you putting up with this the whole time?”

Matt ground his teeth. Frank was kind enough to avoid specifically mentioning the moment on both their minds, but the implication was heavy in the air.

“That the reason you didn’t want…” Frank paused, caught himself as if Matt was a prudish parent and Frank was the naughty child a word away from cursing. He cleared his throat, and for the first time Matt got the distinct feeling that Frank was uncomfortable, like he was treading on hostile territory.

Matt would’ve almost found it funny, if it weren’t for the acidic taste of guilt clawing its way up his throat.

He pushed away Frank’s hand and lowered his shirt.

Only now did he see how fucking stupid he’d been. Yes, Frank had never informed of his position on all this, and Matt was working off a pretty strong fucking assumption about what he wanted. He’d recognised the signs – the way his heart picked up around Matt, the way his palms grew sweaty and his skin warmed. But he’d read into it all wrong. He shouldn’t have initiated… He was impatient, sick of Frank screwing around and saving his life, over and over, receiving nothing in return. Matt’s debts had been stacking up for a long time, and rather than getting rid of the pile, it felt as if he’d set it alight.

“Any deeper and I’d be carrying your ass out of here.” Frank muttered.

_I don’t need rescuing. _

He didn’t say that, at least. Frank didn’t deserve it. He’d never acted like he was the big alpha manly man that watched out for him. He’d never asked for anything in return. And most importantly because all evidence very clearly pointed to the contrary. He’d been pulled out of the thick of the fire this time, as well as numerous times before. And not just by Frank. By Foggy, by Claire. Karen, Jessica, Danny, and Luke too. Truth was, as much as he tried, as much as he found it necessary, the only deductive inference that could come from looking over his history was that Matt wasn’t all that great at the lone wolf thing.

Matt turned his head away from him, cheek pressed into the cold concrete beneath them and his breaths disturbing the dust at Frank’s feet.

“Would it kill you to fucking talk to me?”

Matt swallowed. He wasn’t Frank. Matt didn’t know how to just, blatantly tell it like it was like Frank could. Didn’t know if he wanted to.

“Come on, Red… Bitch, whine, complain. Tell me I’m a scumbag, I don’t care, just say _something_.”

_What?_

Matt should be the one apologising. What with him having gone and borderline assaulted the man.

Frank’s frown deepened at his continued silence.

He released a low, frustrated growl and rubbed agitatedly at the back of his head.

“I can’t… I can’t be in your head. Not when it comes to this.”

How was he supposed to explain? ‘My life is a lie’ sounded a little too dramatic. ‘My dead mother’s alive’ equally so. Anything from ‘every parental figure I’ve ever known was full of bullshit’ to ‘the grounds which I’ve built my entire sense of self have just crumbled beneath me’ weren’t really the answers Frank seemed to be seeking here.

Matt sensed a hand hover above him, before it fell back to Frank’s side.

“_Help me_ understand Red, please. I need to know. What was that?”

Matt locked up at that. Frank Castle didn’t beg, but there was no dismissing the bitten-off desperation that began to edge into his tone. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded worried.

And that didn’t make sense, because Frank should either be furious or apathetic. Concern was an outlier that didn’t belong in this equation. Matt didn’t know what to do with that.

He didn’t have the brainpower for this. He was exhausted. In the past week alone he’d been chased, shot at, stabbed, blown up, temporarily deafened, unmasked, and yet despite all the bullshit that’d gone on, he’d gotten no closer to finding a way to get at Fisk.

“Matt-”

Matt tensed at the title. He inhaled a few times, shaky but measured.

“_Don’t-_”

Matt unsteadily pushed himself from the floor, scraping the bottom of his energy reserves to return to his feet and biting back a pained grunt that the movement elicited.

“Don’t what? Huh? What do you want?” Frank asked, something hard and raw and powerful in his voice. Anger, maybe. Hurt. Matt couldn’t tell anymore.

“You don’t want me to touch you? Speak to you? Call you by your goddamn name?”

_All of it. _

_None of it._

Frank grabbed Matt by the collar and pulled him to his face, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

There was a beat of silence as Frank waited for an answer. Waited for him to put up a fight like he always did. Let loose some smartass comment or at the very least go for a kick to the balls.

Matt wasn’t in the mood to fight anymore, his mind blank and his body aching.

“Lemme’ tell you something Matt, you say the word and you’ll never have to see my face again. I’ll go, no questions asked. All you have to do is just say the word…”

Matt’s heart was pounding rapidly against his chest - the fast drumming interrupting the rising volume of white noise between his ears. Maybe it was from the blood loss.

“Do you want me to leave?”

He should say yes. End whatever this was here and now.

But his body wasn’t responding. The word was stuck in his throat, his mouth dry and tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, jaw clenched tight.

It was just one word. A single syllable. He had managed to drive away everyone else in his life away one way or another, intentional or not. What difference was one more person?

Why was this so _hard_?

_Just say it. _

“What do you want Matt?”

“… I don’t know.” He whispered; voice hoarse.

Frank either hadn’t heard him, or wasn’t happy with the answer he was given, because he shook Matt again, the movement relighting the pain at his side.

“Matt!”

Matt growled and pushed Frank off of him. He didn’t have to put much force into it. Frank backed off immediately, almost stumbling into a workbench behind him.

“I want you to stop pretending you give a shit!”

Because he could handle it. He could stomach it all when he knew there was no one left in the world that cared. He could manage anything, but he couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be a burden on yet another person. Matt wasn’t sure he’d be able to survive another heartbreak. Couldn’t allow himself to hope again, only to have it ripped away.

Frank couldn’t be more than a wingspan’s length away from him, but the distance between them stretched long and taught and felt far colder than it should. He waited, fists balled defensively, to be yelled at, or punched. Or, at the very least, for Frank to leave.

Instead, Frank did the last thing Matt could’ve expected.

He took one step, slowly, telegraphing his intent as if Matt was a scared deer prepared to bolt, then another, allowing him time to pull away if he wanted to, before finally closing the coldness in the air as he enveloped Matt in his arms.

For a moment Matt was so taken aback by the strangeness of it that he lied still, bewildered into a docile daze. He wasn’t sure why he’d never anticipated this outcome. Neither of them were particularly comfortable with open displays of vulnerability. Each of them about as unhealthily emotionally repressed as the other, but behind his hard exterior, Frank was a natural caregiver. He’d clearly isolated himself from human contact a long time ago, and he wasn’t exactly fluent in it anymore, but he’d never forgotten it. He didn’t treat Matt like he'd shatter like glass if touched the wrong way, pulling him in as close as physically possible without crushing him, and there wasn’t an inch of selfishness in it. He didn’t utter a single word. Simply breathed him in.

Matt thought Frank might’ve broken him a little, right then and there. Because suddenly it felt like gravity was switched back on and and the weight of the world was released from above him, crushing the hollowed-out shell that was left of his being. It was as if he’d finally been given permission to let everything he’d been bottling up for the past week go. He hiccupped, and the thick feeling choking him cracked open, a broken-off sob escaping him. He deflated into Frank, shoulders shaking, his tears soaking into the protective veil of his mask.

Matt didn’t know how long they stayed like that, but they did so silently, not a single sound emitted by either of them. By the time he pulls away, his tears have dried, and the tight wind of his muscles have effectively uncoiled their tension.

The sense of loss when he pulls away from the steady thump of Frank’s heartbeat was immediate. Matt shook off the cold of it, and cleared his throat.

Frank rubbed the back of his neck.

“We should get out of here. Head back to David’s.”

Matt swallowed, closing his eyes.

“No.”

“What?”

“I’ve already wasted enough time, sitting on my ass doing nothing.”

“_Recovering_.” Frank interjected.

“Whatever you want to call it. The world won’t wait until I’m healthy, and – agh!” Matt grabbed hold of the nearest wall as an arc of fire shot up his side. Frank stepped forward, aborting his approach when Matt put up a hand to stop him.

He took a couple of steady breaths, pushing the pain to the back of his mind.

“- and neither will Fisk.”

Frank grimaced.

“I’m not talking about lying around doing nothing for weeks, Red. What I’m suggesting is a quick stop where we get you stitched up before gearing up to go out again.”

Matt wet his lips, reluctant to entertain the idea of more rest, regardless of how good it sounded right now.

“Come on, we can argue about this later. Let’s get out of here first.”

Matt could agree with that much. He followed behind Frank, pushing a hand against the wound at his side.

They managed to successfully sneak out of the building without drawing further attention. Though, Matt didn’t think it possible for anyone to hear them if they hadn’t already done so earlier. If they had any brain cells remaining, they would’ve called it quits and ran the moment they knew the Punisher had arrived.

Matt’s clarity of mind ebbed in and out as he trailed after Frank, trusting the man so far as for him to be able to alert Matt if anyone else came their way.

“Hey.” Frank called softly.

Matt blinked, tilting his head slightly as he refocused himself. The pain was usually helpful. Something that helped him stay in the present and push farther, his senses making the world sharp and tangible around him. It only worked for so long, though. After a while, he would crash, the injuries weighing him down and muddying his perception.

“Hm?”

“It’s this way.” He said, gesturing towards an alleyway.

“Yeah. I’m right behind you.”

Frank was wise enough to not overtly call out Matt’s wavering stream of consciousness.

Matt stopped at the sound of water rushing beneath the crunch of Frank’s boots.

Frank stooped to the ground and wrapped his fingers around a sewer-grate, taking a deep breath before lifting the heavy metal gate from the ground.

“What are you doing?”

Frank patted the dust from his hands, then nodded to the ladder, “This way we avoid any run-ins with police or surveillance hotspots in the city. We can go topside when we’re closer to the suburbs.”

With the grate open, the acrid smell of sewerage rising from beneath them was at full force, burning his nostrils. The logic behind Frank’s plan was sound, but Matt’s entire being fought against the notion of descending into something as tight and confined as the sewers. It was just asking for visions of small, soundproof coffins and suffocating dirt.

Matt went lightheaded as the ringing between his ears rose in volume. He propped himself against the alley wall, sliding down to a crouch.

“Red?”

Matt pressed his palms against his head, willing the wave of dizziness to pass.

“You alright?”

_Stupid question._

“No.” He bit out.

Matt sighed, dropping his hands as the woozy feeling dropped down a notch.

“The sewers aren’t going to work for me.”

“Why? The smell too strong for you?”

Matt wet his lips and turned his head away, “Something like that, yeah.”

Frank was fidgety – rubbing a thumb across his bottom lip as he reassessed their surroundings. His other hand drummed a rhythm against his thigh. One of Frank’s nervous ticks. He wasn’t the only one feeling on edge, out in the open as they were.

Frank’s pulse jumped as someone walked by the alleyway, oblivious to their presence. It was interesting how jittery Frank was in the face of relatively non-combat, day-to-day scenarios, in contrast to how scarily calm and steady his heartbeat was in the thick of a gunfight.

“So, you want to just waltz through the city?” He hissed, “Over half of New York is looking for you. Anyone who’s managed to escape Fisk’s influence wants you thrown in jail, and everyone else wants you dead.”

“Yes. I’m aware. Thank you for the reminder.” Matt gritted out.

“You got a better suggestion?”

Matt’s lips thinned, fists clenching.

“I’m not going down there.”

Frank stared him down.

For all he knew it may have worked on someone that could actually see the look, but it didn’t have much effect on Matt, who stayed true to his refutation.

Frank released a frustrated huff, “Fine.”

He then lifted the sewer-grate with a strained grunt and returned it to its original position.

“I’ve got a safe house not too far from here. It’s not ideal but it’s close enough that we should be able to get there without being detected if we keep our heads down.”

Matt took a deep breath and pushed himself from the wall, stifling a groan as he pressed a hand to his side.

“Lead the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Yeets this chapter into the ether*
> 
> I'm writing again!


	18. Chapter 18

Red wasn’t doing so hot. By the time they’d made it to the block that homed the shitty, abandoned apartment Frank had been using as a hideout, Matt’s face had gone ash-white. Frank could only hope it was from the blood loss, rather than something that they’d need real help for, like hypothermia or infection.

The crowds were denser than he’d like, which wasn’t great for Frank’s nerves - what with the police and the news being so diligent about blasting his and Matt’s faces from every outlet possible. But like usual, between the noise of traffic and the neon lights blaring overhead and people too self-obsessed or oblivious to give two notorious vigilantes a second glance, Frank can only thank New York’s ability to truly not give a shit.

That, or their faces were so bruised and swollen that they were practically unrecognisable.

Frank faltered when he heard someone cursing vehemently behind him, spinning around to find Red on his knees. The crowd parted around Red, who kept his head down, hoodie hiding his expression as he grasped tightly at his side.

“What the fuck, man?”

A man in suit and tie leaned down, picked up his phone, groaning when he twisted it around to find the screen cracked. “God,_ asshole_. Have you ever tried looking where you’re going?”

Frank made a menacing step toward him, stopping when Red sprung up before he could reach the man himself. He clutched his fists around the guy’s collar, yanking him forward and hoisting him up until he was teetering on his toes. The man’s eyes widened and the phone dropped to the floor, forgotten as he put his hands up, holding onto Matt’s wrists for dear life.

“No. I haven’t.” Matt snarled.

His tone was harsh, and far angrier than Frank’s used to hearing. For a moment he thinks Matt might actually drop his defenceless lawyer act and give this random, innocent civilian a beatdown.

The man’s terrified gaze centred on Matt’s glazed, unfocused one, and his eyes seemed to widen even further, if that were possible.

“I- I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”

Frank was almost disappointed when Matt dropped the guy, who dashed away, broken phone forgotten.

The interaction couldn’t have lasted more than thirty seconds, but they’d still managed to garner unwelcome attention - a couple people having stopped to witness the action. He spotted a few phones pointed towards them, and Frank raised a hand to put on Matt’s shoulder, before letting it drop, knowing better than to try and coax Red out of it with physical contact. Matt didn’t want honeyed platitudes – he wanted violence. And he was in neither the condition or the place to be provided with the reprieve.

“Red.” He called, “We’ve gotta keep moving.”

That seemed to snap Matt out of reverie he’d bogged himself down into, and he turned away, shoving his hands back into his pockets.

After making a speedy escape, they were fortunate to trudge through the slosh of melted snow that covered the next couple of blocks without incident. Right up until Matt stopped him before they rounded the street to their destination, pulling him to the wall. He tilted his head slightly, reaching out with his senses.

Again, the image of a dog with its ears perked rushed to his mind’s forefront, and Frank forced back the urge to poke him with a ‘_What is it boy?’ _He got the impression that Red would _not_ appreciate the jibe, and he wasn’t exactly in the mood to be hoisted off the ground by his collar.

“Red-”

“We’ve got company.” Matt breathed, “Police… Maybe the feds. Does it matter?”

“Where?”

“Third building down. They’re doing a sweep of the whole place.”

_Shit._

Matt blinked. “Please tell me that’s not the place.”

“Someone must’ve recognised my face.”

Great, _now_ New York gave a shit. Right when the timing was about as bad as it could get.

“It’s more likely Fisk’s had people keeping an eye on you in the past.” Matt noted tiredly, resting the back of his head against the cold concrete behind him.

Frank ducked his head around the corner, spotting three police cars sitting at the apartment block.

“I know a place.” Matt said.

Frank considered it, giving Red a once over. “… How far?”

“Not far.”

“Think you can hold out until then?”

Instead of answering, Matt closed his eyes for half a moment, as if physically conjuring the strength he needed to carry on, then pushed away from the wall. They moved slowly, and when Matt lost his balance for the third time in a row, almost stumbling over and cracking his head on the curb, Frank took him by the arm and helped keep him stable. Matt shook him off the moment he had the cognizance to do so.

_Stubborn son of a bitch._

The silence and tension between them had started to feel oppressive. Matt had put up a front again, and the undercurrent of untrusting tenseness felt uncomfortably similar to how it had when he’d first spoken to him on that rooftop. Minus the mutuality of the untrusting tenseness. Which somehow made it worse.

It was becoming increasingly clear that breaking down one of Matt’s walls didn’t equate to getting the man to open up to him. Which was fine. Frank hadn’t expected them to hug it out and have everything return to normal again. He still had a lot of unresolved issues about the topic himself. Problem was, he had no idea what to say.

Matt guided him to an older neighbourhood, one of the sides yet to be touched by the ever-expanding gentrification of the area. They approached a door with a red plaque hanging overhead that read _Fogwell’s Gym_, and Matt picked up a hefty rock from the asphalt, before taking a step and clumsily hurling it through the glass panel of the door.

Frank cringed, checking the streets there had been any response to the noise. “Subtle.”

Matt shrugged, reaching a hand through the broken shards and unlocking it from the inside.

Frank examined the dark corners of the gym.

“There a first aid kit in here? Or y’know, a light switch?” He asked.

Matt practically collapsed on the closest bench, his hands wrapping around his side when the sharp movement jarred his wound. “Power’s cut at the end of the day to save on electricity. You can check the first locker to your left.”

Frank took off his jacket, throwing it over the ropes of the ring before heading towards the row of metal lockers.

“Y’seem to know this place pretty well.” He commented, hoping to draw some background from Red.

Matt didn’t elaborate beyond a simple unenthused, “Yeah.”

It was times like these that he wished he was better at this. Frank never was one for small talk. He’d rather get straight to the point. But if Matt got the idea he was being interrogated, he’d bail out.

He kept his mouth shut as he opened the locker, grateful for the limited amount of vision he was provided by the street lights outside. True to Matt’s word, a first aid kit sat the bottom of the locker, alongside a couple protein bars, which Frank dug into immediately, having overlooked thoughts of food for most of the day.

“Here.” He said, tossing one to Matt.

Matt caught it without issue, but beyond that, didn’t make any attempt to try and consume the food.

His expression went tight as he peeled away his shirt from his side, the fabric clinging where the blood had begun to dry and crust around the wound.

Frank returned with the kit, setting it beside him and taking out what they’d need. He took only a cursory glance at the small bottle of Aspirin. Even if masochist Matt didn’t refuse the pain relief, Frank wasn’t about to risk thinning out Red’s already low supply of blood.

Matt rose a hand when Frank dropped to a knee alongside him. “I can do it.”

“Don’t be a dumbass, my hands are steadier than yours. Plus,” Frank added, “I haven’t been leaking blood for the past hour.”

Matt jaw twitched, before he dropped his guard with a tired sigh. “You make a compelling argument.”

Frank took a cloth and handed it to Red, letting him wipe away the excess blood trickling down to the V of his hips as Frank sterilized the needle and thread. He pressed a stabilizing hand to Matt’s abdomen, ignoring the fleeting shudder that the touch elicited. Red’s skin was more sensitive than most. Best not to read into it. He lined up the edges of the wound, directing Matt to shift into the light where possible, then pushed the suture through his skin.

“What the hell happened to you today?”

The question had been on his mind when he’d found Matt, expression murderous as those scumbags held him up by the roots of his hair, and only echoed louder the longer the night had gone on, for the obvious reasons, but also the more obscure ones. Matt was tense, sporadic. Irate in a way that his encounter with the traffickers didn’t explain. For some reason it was only now, in the privacy of darkness, with Red pliant beneath his hands, that Frank found the courage to ask.

Matt throat worked, but his lips remained sealed. Frank didn’t press him. Only continued suturing together his skin. Right when Frank thought he wasn’t going to receive an answer at all, Matt shifted.

He lightly wrapped a hand around Frank’s wrist, stilling his movement.

“I’m sorry.” Matt said quietly. It was achingly sincere, but to Frank’s ears, all that registered was regret. Frank almost wished he’d stayed silent.

“I don’t mean-” Frank’s face screwed up and he waved vaguely between them, “Before that. You uh… You disappeared.”

Matt wet his lips and released his grip, pulling back into himself.

“It seemed like you needed time.”

“So, what?” Frank asked, anger edging its way back into his voice, “You were just going to leave my ass in the wind?”

Matt scoffed derisively. “Don’t kid yourself Frank, you didn’t want to talk. I was doing you a favour.”

Frank’s lips pressed into a hard line, and he looked away, returning to the incomplete sutures.

“_Right_. A favour. That’s all it was.”

Matt went tense as the next stitch threaded through his skin, and Frank mentally cursed.

It shouldn’t hurt him. Matt’s words should bounce off of Frank, powerless as a frail punch. They weren’t supposed to piece his heart and fester there. The infection slowly reaching his mind and clouding his better judgement.

Matt didn’t respond, which only managed to make matters worse. The implication was in the air. And his lack of attempt to even try and invalidate Frank’s statement proved it. Proved that he’d known that Frank was, on some level, interested, and that he’d done what he’d done out of some absurd sense of obligation.

Frank clenched his jaw and finished the stitches, cutting the thread and covering his work with a bandage. The gym had settled into an uncomfortable tenseness, the silent stillness of the room interrupted only by the occasional passing car outside.

His eyes caught on Matt’s troubled expression for a moment, and Frank’s brows furrowed. He dropped his gaze, packing the instruments back into the first aid kit and standing, allowing Red some space.

“I can keep watch outside.” He murmured.

“Stay.” Matt said quickly, and Frank freezes.

“… Please.”

Frank was filled with a profound sense of relief, and implicitly, he knew that wasn’t just because he wasn’t exactly itching to freeze his ass off in the snow.

“Think my ribs are better.” Matt noted awkwardly. Wanting to keep up the momentum before the room could return to uncomfortable silence.

Frank grunted something of a response, playing along.

“Getting stabbed tends to make all your other aches feel dull. I’m sure you’ll be whining about them again first thing tomorrow morning.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Hm. Well, you look like shit. You should lay down before you pass out.”

Matt focused until his glazed eyes met Frank’s, just to prove he could, then stood up and walked to the lockers.

Frank rubbed his eyes, exhausted.

He understood Matt’s obsession with taking down Fisk better than anyone. He got it, even if he didn’t agree with his methods. That dogged, unrelenting drive to tear down the one that threatens those you love. It was better than the haunted, scattered feeling that crept up on him when he sat still in one place for too long. Frank had been stuck in that hole for a long time. Still wasn’t even sure he’d climbed out of it. He had never planned to survive for this long. Hadn’t expected that he’d live through to the burnout stage. Watching Matt go through the same self-destructive process he had, telling Frank that he would stop when it was over… It was a hard pill to swallow.

Matt pulled some rope from the lockers, straightening them out with sharp, jerky movements. Frank looked away with a frustrated exhale and studied the old pictures decorating the gym’s walls. Another car passed by outside, and Frank’s attention sharpened as the light travelled across one of the posters.

_Huh…_

He walked towards the poster until he was close enough to make out the words through the dimness of the room.

“Battlin’ Jack Murdock.” He murmured under his breath, quietly enough that Matt could pretend he hadn’t heard if Frank was pushing a sore subject.

Across the room, Matt’s hands froze, his shoulders stiffening.

He recognised the name, clearly. Did Matt fight here when he was younger? Frank didn’t really see why he’d use the name Jack, but it could be a moniker. He’d been a lawyer. Maybe he wanted to maintain some anonymity. Though, in a place like Hell’s Kitchen, and with the scumbags Matt had gotten into a habit of protecting, being a boxing champion would’ve probably been great for publicity. Maybe this was where he trained. Though it was difficult for Frank to imagine that a gym full of people having zero questions for the ripped blind guy with an absurdly good right hook.

When Frank didn’t continue, Matt took the rope and began slowly wrapping over the bruises on his knuckles, his skin torn an angry shade of red.

“Thought they would’ve taken that down a long time ago.”

Frank felt he was treading on some mighty thin ice here, but there was something about Matt’s tone that pushed him to keep going.

“So, this is where you learned how to take a hit?”

“What?” Matt frowned. “No, I -…”

He hesitated, and Frank turned, crossing his arms over his chest.

“He was my dad.”

Frank took a moment to process that. It wasn’t what the career he had expected for Matt’s father. Red’s initial good Catholic boy act had misdirected him into assuming that his father had been a pastor, or a teacher, or maybe that Matt had followed in his footsteps by becoming a lawyer. On a list of guesses, boxer would’ve been towards the bottom.

Though, the more he thought about it, the more believable Frank found the concept.

“He taught you how to fight?”

Matt snorted.

“_Fuck no_, fighting’s the last thing he wanted for me. If my father knew what his fragile, blind Matty had become he’d probably be horrified. Then again, that’s his problem for being so proud he’d rather die for one last win in the ring than live for a son he thought would be ashamed of him.” Matt punctuated with a final, angry pull to the knot around his right hand.

Frank swallowed. _Damn Red._ That was one way to break the ice. Now he just needed a moment to adjust to the depressing depth of the frigid water.

Frank waited a couple of beats before he asks, “How’d you learn?”

Matt’s eyes narrowed. “Whatever happened to you not giving a shit about who’s under the mask?”

Frank smacked his lips together and looked away with a noncommittal shrug, “Yeah well. Don’t know about the Devil, but that Matt Murdock – his shit is pretty interesting.”

He’s rewarded with a half a smile from Matt, which fell away as quickly as it’d formed as he shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

Matt rose an eyebrow.

“Alright… Old blind martial arts master from a secret ancient organization-slash-cult named Stick took me in for a while.”

Frank stared at him, wondering if he was joking. When Red didn’t follow up with a punchline, his mind sifted through a dozen questions, most of which were invasive and probably considered rude.

He settled on a simple nod of acknowledgement.

“He didn’t stay around for all that long.”

Frank was beginning to realise that that was a pretty regular pattern present throughout Matt’s life.

“Why?”

Matt faltered.

“Got too close, I guess.”

“_Too close_.” Frank echoed. “To your adoptive parent.”

“He was more of a teacher than a parent… Kind of on the opposite spectrum to my dad, now that I think about it. Taught me how to hone my senses, defend myself, weaponize my anger. Used to say that attachments made me weak. That love was a distraction. That comfort was a luxury I couldn’t afford. That it would get me killed one day.”

Frank grimaced.

_Frivolous. Nothing serious. He just wants someone to screw around with._

He fought down the bile in his throat and ignored the sound of his heart between his ears. Ignored the fact that Matt could hear the pounding pulse from across the room. The remnants of his anger and humiliation fell away into a more directed sense of fury as his interpretation of the words that’d been floating around his head-space transformed, moving from a poor, premature judgement on Frank’s character to a very sad act of either self-projection or self-protection.

“This guy still alive?” He growled.

Matt managed a huff of laughter, more of a short exhale than a sound. “Why? You going to hunt him down?”

“He treated you like a soldier.”

“He was trying to make me strong.” Matt replied, and it was painfully earnest.

_Jesus fuckin’ Christ._

“You were a _child_.”

When Matt only scowled, Frank ploughed on, “If it were anyone but you, would you be so forgiving?”

“If it were anyone but me, he’d never have taken them in to begin with.”

Frank didn’t know enough about the shitbag to argue with Matt about that.

_So, after carrying internalised guilt that it was in part, your fault your dad died, you spent your formative years being beaten into a soulless weapon. _

“So, the old blind guy called Stick taught you to be a ninja.”

Somehow, this was starting to explain a lot about Matt.

“Wasn’t that easy of a process. Had a lot of beatings before I started winning fights. Used to get my ass kicked on a daily basis. Guess the only reason I’m here now is because I kept getting back up.”

“Hm.”

Frank eyed the stark bruises that marred the visible portions of his skin. Then his mind wandered to the long, deep lacerations across his chest and back. He’d known men who’d served three tours and hadn’t gathered scars as bad. Though, Matt consisted of a lot less faded bullet wounds and a lot more unique and varied cuts and slashes. It occurred to Frank that Matt had been doing this gig for a lot longer than he had, and he wondered just how many fights Matt must’ve been in. How many of those scars had been from the same fight.

“What did people say when you were showing up every day to court beaten to hell and back.”

“They probably just thought I was shit at being blind. Or a domestic abuse victim.”

“Jesus.”

“Most people were respectful enough to not bring it up.”

“What about the rest of us rude assholes?”

“I don’t know.” Matt heaved a sigh. “I’d brush it off. Say I fell down the stairs, drank too much, got hit by a car, accidentally stumbled into a bar fight. It’s New York. The possibilities are endless.”

He tied off the rope on his left hand, then pulled at the knots, testing the sturdiness of his work.

“You ever get tired of pretending you were someone else. Acting like you were weak.”

Matt sank a little. “Sometimes. I guess I thought it was worth it. That it was the price I had to pay if I wanted a half-way decent life.”

He didn’t have the time to unpack that statement before Matt asked, “How’s your shoulder?”

Frank frowned.

“What about my shoulder?”

“Might want to check it.”

Frank did so, pulling his collar across and craning his head to assess it.

“Other side.”

Frank paused, then followed his direction to discover a dark, purple-blue bruise colouring his left shoulder.

“_How the f-”_ He mumbled, craning his head as he tried to assess the extent of the damage. The bruising faded into softer blues and greens as it stretched below his shirt.

Frank hadn’t even noticed it. Must’ve picked up the injury when he and Matt fell through the floor.

“How do you do that?” He asked, genuinely impressed.

“It’s the uh… Bleeding beneath the skin. Heat’s gathered more tightly in that area.”

“Huh…”

Hoping that Matt would get some shut-eye if he was left to his own devices for a couple of minutes, Frank removed his shirt and informed Red that he was going to take a shower. Before today, Matt had at least understood the logic of food and sleep. Now it seemed that despite the dark circles beneath his eyes, and his increasingly sluggish movements, Matt was refusing anything that would be an act for his own wellbeing.

By the time Frank returned from the freezing water, feeling more refreshed and awake than before, Matt was beating the shit out of a punching bag, which, though may not have been his intention, Frank deciphered it as a fairly clear _fuck you_.

\---------------------------------------------

The thing was, Matt was well aware that what he was doing wasn’t healthy. That was the point. As long as he was in a stage of fight-or-flight, as long as his brain remained in that spiral of anger and he could still feel pain, all the other shit could be put at bay. So, his mind and body were going to have to just keep keeping on until one of them inevitably gave out.

His thoughts were drowned out by sound as his burner phone rang, stirring Frank from his doze.

Matt picked up the phone and answered, “Yeah?” Knowing full well who would be on the other side of the line.

“Fisk has left the hotel.” Nadeem’s voice could be heard loud and clear through the speaker, and Frank stood, closing the distance between them.

Matt breathed through the wave of rage that crashed over him, keeping his voice even.

“How is that possible?”

“I don’t think Dex was the only FBI agent he turned. But he’s taking Fisk to meet with other crime bosses. Some kind of sit-down.”

“Where?”

“I’m texting you the address. But if you catch Fisk in the act-”

“This is our chance to take hum down.” Matt finished.

“Thank you, Nadeem.” He said, ending the call.

“You’re not seriously going to fall for that bullshit, are you?” Frank asked.

Matt ignored him, activating text to speech and grabbing a coat and a cap as the automated voice recited the address.

Frank remained motionless, watching Matt as he pulled on the clothes.

“Your plan is to what? Just walk straight into their trap? In your condition?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind. You don’t even know if Fisk’s gonna be there.”

Matt knew it was probably a trap. But he didn’t have a shit left to give. Too mad to think straight.

This was a lead. The first opportunity they’d had for weeks. He couldn’t stop now. He needed to keep moving forward. Preferred the rush of adrenalin and its ability to drown out his thoughts over having to think about Frank or his mother or his friends or anyone else otherwise involved in his life. 

His body ached and his head throbbed, but Matt had trained for this. And as long as he had Stick’s memory rotting away in his head, repeating the phrase ‘_don’t be a pussy, Matty’_, he was going to take those electrical signals from his weeping wounds that were clawing up his brain stem and screaming to his brain that his body was breaking down, and bury them someplace they couldn’t be heard.

“You know what Red, I’d kick your ass myself if it weren’t a waste of my goddamn time.”

Matt wondered if Frank was capable of saying anything without a hint of concern or derision or anger or pain. If he could just say something normally for once, keep his emotions hidden.

“You were right.” Matt stated.

“What’d you say?”

Matt closed his eyes and breathed.

He knew how dangerous Fisk was. The law couldn’t contain him. Prison couldn’t contain him. Nothing could. He needed to be removed from the face of the planet. And Matt, despite his past grievances with the idea, felt he’d been backed into a corner. Maybe if he took down Fisk he’d be able to make up for all the deaths and corruption he’d allow to occur by letting him fall through his fingers the first time. And if he could get hit hard enough for long enough, maybe he’d never have to think about the repercussions of making that decision.

“Your way is better, Frank.” Matt admitted, “It always was. I can stop him for good.”

And with that, he headed for the door.

Or at least, tried to.

Frank jumped him, grabbing his arm and twisting it behind his back until he released a yelp of pain. Before Matt could even think to react, his legs were kicked out from beneath him, and the ground has come up to meet him. Frank’s familiar weight settled on top of him.

He could feel Frank’s breath, warm and heavy against his ear, and Matt hated it. Hated how much he enjoyed the feeling of Frank there. The way he could hear the breaks in the calm rhythm of his heartbeat. How a simple word or movement from him was all it took to make it stutter and pick up pace, even when the rest of him showed zero sign of being bothered by the contact. Hated that Frank saw straight through him. That he’d never treated Matt as less than him.

“I need you to listen now, Red.” Frank growled, low and serious. “See, I have more concern for the bugs I may have walked over than the shitbags I’ve killed. I don’t have remorse. I don’t have regrets. I put the gun in my own hands, on my own terms, and when I’m done, I sleep soundly knowing every last bastard I’ve put down can no longer steal oxygen from the rest of us.”

Matt bucked up against him, and Frank dug his knee into his back, reigniting the pain in his lungs.

“You’re a dumbass that sees the good in bottom-of-the-barrel, gutter trash that hardly deserve the cost of the bullet I’d send through their skulls. You’re not me, n’ you never will be… I respect that about you. Hell, I admire it. So, do me a _real favour_, and don’t spit on that. Don’t you go, running around, thinking you’ll be able to live with doing what I do, on your own volition. You can’t. You’d find someway to blame yourself. The guilt, the shame. Fear and paranoia. It would eat at you, tear at your soul. Because at the end of the day, Red, despite how much you _think _you want this, truth is, the gun’s never been in your hands, and you’ve never wanted it there in the first place.”

Frank released his grip on his chin, and just as Matt is thinking he was finally lifting his weight off of him, Frank’s other fist came flying down, and his world goes blank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewatched season 2 so I could get a handle on how to write these character’s dialogue again and fuck me, the show is good quality. Reminded me why I wanted to start this fic in the first place again. Just sad that we’re never going to see interaction between these iterations of Matt and Frank again.


	19. Chapter 19

He’d recognised that look on Red. Reminded him of a marine back at the barracks. Dead ass expression as he hung his coat up and put on his uniform. Time to go to work.

This was the one where Red thought his options had run dry. Where the emotional hooks that’d been digging into his skin for the past year had finally burrowed deep enough to have found purchase. When people trying to do the right thing found themselves sucked into a corruption that was mercilessly administered and coldly metered out. Frank wasn’t about to watch a scumbag as low as Fisk be the cause for a good man’s turn. 

But even as Frank cracked a fist across Matt’s temple, and the body beneath him went limp and boneless, Frank couldn’t rid the feeling that he was being a coward. That he hadn’t had it in him to declare that it fucking mattered to him. That the thought of him being in pain again was driving Frank up the goddamn wall. That if Matt had half of a functional braincell remaining, he would’ve seen that already.

Matt of course, wouldn’t have listened, regardless of what he’d said. No words would’ve gotten him to stand down. Some soldiers didn’t listen to reason. Didn’t care about orders. Sometimes they just wanted the fight.

Didn’t mean he shouldn’t had said it, though.

He swallowed down the guilt that threatened to bubble up from within him. For once, the slow, deep breaths did little to stay the shakiness of his hands as he turned Red over so he was laying on his back and laid his coat behind his head. Frank took the phone that’d slipped from Red’s hands and keyed the address into his own phone before tucking it back into Matt’s pocket.

He stood, running a hand across his face.

He needed a goddamn coffee.

Frank left Matt where he lay, and assessed the address that Nadeem had given them with a weary glare.

Frank didn’t like this. Not one bit. He was used to having reliable intelligence and at least a little prep-time. Having no idea what the fuck he was walking into was Red’s thing, not Frank’s. Not to mention he trusted Nadeem about as much as he trusted Red’s capacity to not run into a fight. Nada.

He could believe that Fisk was on the move. Could believe that he was at the address Nadeem had left, even. He just didn’t have any faith in Fisk allowing this information out without his knowledge. It was a little too convenient.

Frank was half-tempted to go to whatever trap they had planned out to lure in the Devil, if only for the opportunity to kill anyone Fisk had thought worthy of throwing out the hook, line, and sinker. But he also wasn’t a massive fan of the idea of knowingly taking bait set out for him.

No. Frank had a better an idea.

The fat cat had finally come down from his ivory tower. This presented an opportunity.

Red wasn’t the only one that had kept a close eye on him. Frank had canvassed the place Fisk was held up a while ago. What had started as strict supervision of law enforcement had become Fisk’s personal army, and the Presidential Hotel had been converted into a fortress, crawling with guards from the first floor to the penthouse suite.

He could always force his way in, but doing so would give himself away. Fisk would be out of the building and gone before Frank could get within shooting range of him. But if he could get Fisk to come to him… If Frank could find his way to the top floor unseen within the next hour, he had a chance.

Frank glimpsed at his phone, checking the time. If he was going to do this, he had to do it now.

Frank allowed himself one last glance towards Matt, then turned to leave, prepared to face his enemies, armed with nothing but the handgun tucked safely into the back of his jeans and his fists.

The process of getting to the hotel went smoothly enough. The cab driver either not recognising him or being smart enough to pretend not to. It was what came after that would prove tricky.

The front door was an option, of course. He could try and fly under the radar, pose as a guest, ask for a room.

Didn’t take all that much deliberation for Frank to scrap that plan. Even if the FBI didn’t have his face ingrained into their memories as part of their training for this gig, Frank was no actor. There was no way he’d be able to pull off the appearance of some stuck-up, bourgeoise prick willing to stay under the same roof as Wilson Fisk.

All things considered, it seemed to Frank the easiest way into the building would be through the exhaust vents. Building that large, as old as it was – the shafts would probably be strong enough to hold his weight.

The cabbie dropped him off, and Frank passed the protesters and the police. He rounded the corner into a neighbouring alleyway, examining the walls until he found what he’d been searching for. Frank double-checked his surroundings, then climbed on top of a dumpster. He pressed his fingers around the exhaust vent grate, before ripping it from its hinges and sticking his head into it. There was enough space for a body, alright, but the vent curved quickly, going vertical near-immediately – up, up, up into darkness.

Looked like Frank was in for some climbing.

If only vents were like they were depicted in fucking Hollywood. That would be the fuckin’ dream, wouldn’t it? All horizontal, spacious, clean, stretches of metal that were easy to move through. Instead, Frank was here, living in the pits of reality, sucking in dust and dirt, probably picking up some respiratory illness, arms and thighs straining from having to shimmy his way up six floors of vertical shaft.

Frank climbed upwards into ink black, unaware that he’d hit a branching point until his back met open air instead of solid metal. He slipped rearward - found himself blindly scrambling for purchase before he was able to wedge himself between the floor and roof of the smaller horizontal vent.

Blood roared in his ears, drowning out everything except his own circulation. Frank stilled. He didn’t know how long he waited in that position. Only that he didn’t move again until his racing heart had slowed to a more manageable pace.

He crawled forward cautiously, hyperaware of the creaking noise of the metal straining under his weight. He knew enough to know that the exhaust shaft would either lead him to electrical, telecom, janitorial, storage or mechanical rooms, but beyond that, Frank had no clue where the fuck he was. At the very least, he was high enough by now to have bypassed the first couple levels of security.

He angled his body around a sharp corner, and was welcomed by the first visage of light since he climbed into this vent hell. Unfortunately, this also allowed Frank to lay eyes on the cobwebs and rat shit he’d have to be crawling through to reach his access point. Still better than blood and human shit, he supposed.

After listening out for voices or footsteps and coming up all clear, Frank kicked open the grate. The metal fell to the floor with a loud clatter, and Frank came clattering down with it. He steadied himself quickly - pulled himself to his feet and took his gun out before scanning the room. No hostiles. What he was met with was all manner of switchboards, circuit breakers and control panels. Dropped right on top of the electrical room. Frank could work with that.

He opened the door a crack, and peered into the hallway. Frank jerked backward at the sight of a guard making his way towards him, and clicked the door quietly shut.

_Fuck it._ He wasn’t crawling back into those goddamn vents again. Time to improvise.

Frank waited - ear pressed to the door, until the guard’s boots couldn’t be more than a step away, then burst out into the open. The man let out a startled shout as Frank threw an arm around his throat and dragged him backwards into the room. He increased the pressure around his chokehold. Didn’t let up until the man stopped kicking.

When he was sure the man was out, Frank stripped the guard of his uniform and pocketed his ID card. He took his cap from the ground and set it low, obscuring as much of his face as possible. As far as disguises went, this would have to do.

Frank moved on. Made his way to the stairwell and travelled upwards towards the top floor, dodging patrols by simply keeping his head down. As long as he looked like he knew what he was doing and where he was going, people wouldn’t look twice.

He paused after the final set of stairs, hand hovering over the handle of the door. Frank breathed in, out, then opened the door.

The corridor was empty.

Frank was surprised, despite himself. He’d considered the likelihood of there being armed guards defending the main entrance to the suite. Possible. Unlikely, but possible. If Fisk had control of the FBI, there would be no reason to keep up the appearance of being under guard. No, it was more probable that Fisk had taken those people with him. Extra protection, or intimidation. Show the other crime bosses just how much influence he had over the city.

Frank approached the door and tried swiping the guard’s ID card across the lock. _Access denied_. Should’ve expected as much.

Frank suddenly felt a distinct sense of ease. A prickling on the back of his neck that told him he was being watched. He looked up and promptly found himself staring right into the lens of a camera.

_Shit._

Frank dropped his gaze to the ground, but it was too late. Whoever was watching had seen his face.

He debated breaking the door down. Though that idea seemed counterproductive to the whole idea of ambushing Fisk on a basis of stealth. Then again, who was he kidding. If their surveillance had spotted him, Frank had already fucked the operation.

His thoughts skidded to a stop when the lock clicked open. Frank took a step back and reached for his handgun – aimed the weapon at the entryway.

He waited a beat. Then another. And when no one came through the door, he kicked it open himself.

Frank wasn’t met with any immediate resistance, but he kept his gun raised as he moved into the suite, disgust roiling low in his stomach at the lavish grandness of it all. This scumbag was living in luxury.

Frank spat on the ground, then did a brief sweep of the room, rotating through the entire penthouse. He stopped short at the bedroom when he was met with what looked like a false panel, wide open, and leading down into a hidden room below.

He descended cautiously, knowing full well this could be a trap.

The room was dim, lit only by the blue light of computer screens. There, seated in front of the screens, was a woman, her hands raised. She swivelled her chair around very slowly to face Frank. He could see the tremors that racked her body from where he stood. The woman was neatly dressed – prim, groomed, clean. Scared. Frank’s eyes caught briefly on a device around her leg. An ankle-monitor. Fisk’s, undoubtedly. Couldn’t go breaking house arrest while he was out building his crime empire.

“Ma’am.” Frank greeted, lowering his gun. “You let me in.” A lilt of inquisitiveness coloured the statement.

“You’re the Punisher.” She cleared her throat, though it did little to remove the shakiness in her voice as she confirmed. “You’re here to kill Fisk.”

Frank allowed himself to pull his attention away from her and examined the feed she’d been monitoring. Fisk had his own goddamn surveillance room under his bed. Eyes on every inch of the hotel, as well as most of the street.

“What’s his ETA?” He asked.

She stood up; her eyes filled with something akin to hope. Relief.

“Minutes.”

Frank nodded, said, “Thanks.” Then was midway through turning to leave when a radio crackle sounded out.

_“Franklin Nelson successfully apprehended and on route to Red Hook Packing Plant. Karen Page located at the Clinton Church.”_

Frank gripped the grip of his gun tightly, the bottom dropping out of his stomach.

_“Keep all NYPD units clear of Clinton Church until otherwise advised. Copy?”_

“What does Fisk want with Page and Nelson?” He asked lowly.

“I’m not sure what he wants with the man, but…” She swallowed, eyes shifting to the screen then back to Frank. “I know he wants the woman killed.”

Frank froze, the heat in his chest turned to ice.

Fisk was going to send Poindexter after her.

He’d planned this. Planned for everything. Fisk had the board at checkmate while the rest of them were playing at goddamn snakes and ladders.

The woman must’ve caught onto Frank’s line of thought, because he could instantly identify her regret at having divulged this information. He didn’t blame her for it. She was clearly being blackmailed. Her and everyone else under Fisk’s payroll. A hostage in his home.

She backtracked, adding quickly. “He’s just downstairs. There are no cameras in the bedroom.” As if being able to avoid filmed evidence would somehow sway his decision.

If she knew the first thing about Frank, she’d know that he’d gladly kill Fisk in front of the whole world to see if given the chance.

Maybe he still had time. He could still kill the piece of shit…

But, then… Karen…

He began to pace, muttering to himself as he stared at the door, then back towards the monitors. There was a line of vehicles pulling into the garage.

If he left for Karen and Nelson now, there was no way he’d be able to come back. Opportunities as good as this were few and far between.

“How long?” He barked.

She blinked. “What? What are-”

“How long until he gets here?” He spoke over her, voice lowered to a threatening growl.

She shook her head, mouth agape.

“Seconds.”

The scar at the back of his head prickled a phantom pain, and Frank rubbed at it agitatedly. _No time._ There was no time.

The woman witnessed his conflict, and stood, her hands raised, expression pleading.

“If you leave, I have to tell him you were here. He’ll triple security. Getting back in here will be impossible. You’ll never have another chance like this.”

She was terrified. If Fisk learned she had let him in, there was a high likelihood of her being shot on the spot. Frank was sympathetic to her fears. In her eyes, he was supposed to be their saviour. The one to save them from Fisk’s all-consuming influence.

But Frank could only hear the seconds ticking away in his head. He was no hero. Right now, he was just a desperate man intent on stopping one of the only people left in his life that’d shown him true kindness from being murdered.

Fine. Fisk lives another day. Frank would just have to kill his assassin as a consolation prize.

As he turned and left the room, Frank pulled his phone from his pocket and keyed in Red’s number. He tipped his cap low again and kept his head low as he re-entered the corridor.

“Pick up you bastard, pick up, pick up.” He hissed.

Frank eyed the elevator. There would be less chance of Frank running into hostiles in the stairwell, but that way wouldn’t be nearly as fast.

His jaw tightened as he punched the call button. About time he’d made himself known anyway.

The phone went to voicemail. He cursed vehemently and rung the number again.

_I didn’t even hit you that hard. I bounced a bullet off your skull and you survived that without issue you dumb shit, this should be nothing for you._

“Come on, Red,” He muttered, slamming a wall with the flat of his hand, “Come on. Don’t you do this to me now.”

\--------------------------------------------------------

Matt awoke to an obnoxious ringing.

He’d initially tried waiting for the noise to cease. It’d been so long since he’d been able to experience real sleep, uninterrupted by nightmares or a haze of pain that kept him just on the edge of conscious. But the sound only seemed to grow louder the longer he attempted ignoring it. And with it, the pain returned.

He struggled to focus his dizzied, dulled senses. The wound at his side felt a far lot better – or at least, whatever hurt there paled in comparison to the headache pounding his head.

His memory wasn’t all too helpful to begin with. He breathed in, taking in the smell of leather, iron and sweat. The gym. That was right - he’d taken Frank back to Fogwell’s. But Frank’s heartbeat was strangely absent, though his scent - faded, lingered in the air.

The noise returned, and Matt pushed past the cotton in his ears with a groan, honing in on the source of the sound. The ringing was clearer this time, and Matt shoved a hand into his jacket, fishing around his pockets until he found the offensive object.

He brought the phone to his ear, answering with a groggy, “Hello?”

“Red-” The voice sounded incredibly relieved, so much so, that it took Matt a good second or two to be able to place it. The moment he did, Matt’s memory rushed back, and a flare of anger rushed through him.

He looked up sharply, wincing as the action sent little shocks of pain through his skull.

“_Asshole!_”

Frank ignored the insult, choosing instead to get straight to the point when he said, “Fisk’s got Nelson, and he’s sending Poindexter after Karen.”

His tone was clipped and serious, and it took Matt a couple of seconds to fully register the words’ meaning.

When he finally did, his blood went cold, stomach churning in tandem with the swirling vertigo clouding his thoughts.

“_What?_”

“She’s at the Clinton Church. I’m on my way now.” Frank said, voice far calmer and surer than Matt felt.

“No…” No, it was too far. Where was Frank? How’d he manage to come across this information? What were they doing with Foggy? What’d happened to Nadeem’s plan? How long had he been out? There were all too many questions for Matt’s jumbled mental faculties to work through, let alone string into coherent queries.

“It’s gonna be alright, Red. I’ve got her, but I don’t know how much time they have, and I can’t be in two places at once.”

He felt sick, shaky. Frank’s voice was getting quieter, overtaken by the sound of his heartbeat going from too fast in his chest to pounding in his ears.

“I was supposed to protect her.” He said, lost. “I never meant for her to get up in this and now I’m going to get her killed, just like-” Matt’s voice stuttered to a stop.

_Like dad. Like Stick. Like Elektra. _

“_Matt,_ they’re holding your friend at Red Hook Packing Plant.”

Matt’s breath caught in his throat. He knew the place. A meat processing warehouse on east side. Matt’s mind went instantly to the very worst scenario. It only that seemed logical. Why keep a hostage in a slaughterhouse?

He tasted bile at the back of his throat. “He’s going to kill them Frank. He’s going to kill them and it’ll be my fault.”

“Are you deaf as well as blind?”

The bluntness of the question caught Matt off guard, and he found his incessant barge of what-ifs spiralling around his brain grind to a halt.

“No.” He answered dumbly.

“Then tell me the plan.”

Matt blinked, going over Frank’s words in his head, and took a deep breath, slowly.

“You’ll get Karen out of the Church. I’ll head to the packing plant and make sure Foggy’s safe.”

There wasn’t much of a blueprint there to work off of, but it was comforting – grounding, in a weird do-or-die kind of sense, to have the goal post clear in sight. A simple objective to grasp hold of.

“Okay… Listen. Let me ask you something.”

There was a tense pause.

“Do you trust me?”

Matt swallowed, thrown off kilter for the third time in a single conversation, which was almost impressive considering the brevity of it.

Did he trust that Frank would do everything within his power to save Karen? Yes. Easily. But beyond that… Matt had cut everyone from his life that hadn’t already left him high and dry a while ago now. And there were many times throughout his isolation that he thought that he’d lost all capability to allow himself to put that kind of faith in anyone. Not his friends. Not God. Not even himself. Then he had found out about his mother and it was almost as if the universe was sending him a message. Reaffirming his fears.

Matt wasn’t sure he had it within himself to ever be able to trust anyone again. Didn’t know if he had the strength or courage to open up to the risk of pain that came with doing so.

And yet…

“I do.” He breathed, so quietly that there was no way Frank had heard him through the crackle of the receiver.

“I trust you, Frank.”

The line went silent, and if it weren’t for him being able to pick up on Frank’s breathing, he would’ve assumed he’d hung up.

Matt supposed Frank needed a moment to digest that information. Though he wasn’t certain why. He was the one that’d asked the question, wasn’t he? What had he expected him to say?

Frank finally grunted a noise of acknowledgement, then cleared his throat.

“Good… That’s good Red.”

\---------------------------------------------

Matt had always hated passing these places. The blood, shit and viscera were bad enough on their own, but it was the stench of fear that really got to him, pheromones potent and acrid.

He dropped from one of the high platforms overlooking the warehouse and landed lightly to the floor, ignoring the sharp twang of pain that the movement elicited from his side.

Down here, the smell hit like a wall, hung thick in the air. He could taste the iron – even over the bleach. The odour of dying animals surrounding him like a vapour, clinging to his hair and clothes. He pulled his mask further over his nose. The fabric barrier did very little to help.

Matt could only attempt to distract himself by trying to wrap his head around Fisk’s angle. Or more accurately, why he’d chosen this particular moment to go through with his promise. Why not earlier? Why take both of them at the same time? Was he trying to make Matt choose between them? He didn’t know how Frank had gotten his information. Hadn’t had time at all to go over the situation with him, though he doubted that he’d have any answers for Matt even if they did.

Foggy could already be dead, for all he knew. Matt didn’t quite like to dwell on that. Maybe he should, though. It didn’t help to hold onto desperate hopes.

He felt something wet squelch beneath his boot, and stopped.

Matt stooped to a crouch, then dipped his fingers into blood.

The animals in this section had already been hung. Bled dry. Frozen for hours.

The blood was still warm.

Matt stood. He could sense it now. A heat trail of crimson footprints that led away from the pool of blood.

He followed the path, his movement as silent as he could manage.

The prints led him on top of a wooden platform, then disappeared. No body. Nowhere to go. As if whoever had been here had simply vanished.

Matt traced his fingers around the platform, pausing when he felt the slightest current of air rising from the corners, like there was something beneath the boards.

Suddenly, the ground fell out from under him, and Matt was falling.

The air was pushed from his lungs as his battered body collided against the ground. The impact sent a shock of lightning crackling across his nerve endings. Matt’s side was on fire.

He remained where he’d dropped, writhing, unable to discern up from down, listening as the trap door he’d fallen through closed and an automatic latch clicked shut. Through his disorientated state, he thought he heard a sharp intake of breath.

He wondered distantly if there was someone else there with him or if he’d made the noise himself between his hissing and groaning. The thought should’ve concerned him far more than it did at that moment, but Matt didn’t really have time to process all that. Couldn’t focus on much of anything other than the fact that he was underground. That he couldn’t sense any exits. That it was cold, and grimy, and perhaps worst of all, it was cramped.

Fingers of dread began to crawl up his spine. He tried to breathe slow, but could feel himself slipping, the world around him fading, giving way to panic. Packed into a closed space, world around him absolutely silent.

_No oxygen. No way to get out… Closing in… Closing…_

Matt forced himself to still, knuckles white from balled fists as the world around him began to fade away.

_Matt?_

His breathing grew painful, scratching down his throat in great gasps and hollowing out his lungs.

_The stench of decay, clinging to his skin, surrounding the omnipresence of death. Dirt finding its way into his eyes and filling his mouth, compressing his chest, crushing his broken ribs and forcing its way down his windpipe, choking him. _

His fingers curled, nails scratched against the hard ground. He wasn’t sure when he’d sunk to the ground, but he took advantage of the position, resting his head on the ground just to feel something stable.

Matt found himself shivering. He couldn’t shake it. Footsteps approached him, then he felt hands on his shoulders, bracing him. Someone was talking, a meaningless chatter that he wasn’t able to comprehend.

Eventually his name broke through and he shuddered, senses returning.

“Matt? Shit, breathe!”

Matt tried. But try all he liked, he wasn’t able to catch his breath. Couldn’t shake whatever it was gripping his lungs.

The voice kept talking. Incessant and concerned. Fuck, they were chatty. Matt would’ve told them to shut up and back off if it weren’t the only thing grounding him to the present. It took him a while longer to recognise that knew it.

_Foggy. _

He needed to get to Red Hook. He needed to stop Fisk. Protect Foggy. Find Karen and Frank. He needed- he needed-

Something hard cracked across the face.

“You need to breathe, damnit!”

With that, Matt took in a great, shuddering breath.

Then another, and another, until he felt his senses begin to return, the roar of his own heartbeat slowing.

“_Jesus.” _Foggy fell backwards, giving Matt some space.

He waited until Matt got the rhythm of his breathing under some semblance of control, before he asked, “Are you okay?”

Matt’s chest was still far too tight, and his hands were trembling.

“Foggy.” He knew it was him. But he said it, simply because he could. He could sit here and address his best friend by his name and receive an answer because he was still alive.

“Yeah,” Foggy breathed, “It’s me buddy.”

He took comfort in that. It helped him orient himself to his surroundings. The smell… The metallic tang on his tongue. It wasn’t decay. It was blood. A copious amount of it. Fresh. Animal.

“The blood- there was – Foggy, are you okay?”

Foggy waved him off. “Feelin’ a little roughed up, but other than that, I’m fine, Matt.”

Matt closed his eyes, relief washing over him.

“What the _hell_ was that?”

The question brought Matt out of whatever shocked revere he’d found himself trapped in, and he brought a hand to his cheek, red and stinging.

“Did you slap me?” He asked, dazed.

“_Matt_.”

“What are you doing here?”

“What, in this stinking meat cage? Thought it’d make for some lovely accommodation.” He rattled off drily. “Why do you think I’m here, Matt? It’s a set up. They want you here.”

Unease creeped up on him. Did this happen because Matt hadn’t taken Nadeem’s bait? Or did Fisk know about his… alliance? With Frank. Matt’s concern for him and Karen intensified. If Fisk did know, his best course of action would to have them separated, off-footed and vulnerable. Having your assassin sent to kill one of Frank and Matt’s closest allies, whilst kidnapping the other and placing him on the other side of the city, seemed a pretty efficient way of doing that.

Foggy sighed, despondent, before muttering. “Can’t believe I’m being used as bait. Thought I’d be protected as a potential DA. But, what do you know, turns out I’m wrong… Again.”

Matt winced at the trace of bitterness flavouring his words. Matt was the cause of this. That was all he could hear. Foggy hadn’t meant for it to be interpreted that way, of course. He never did. But it didn’t make it less true. Didn’t make Matt any less of an asshole. Foggy deserved to be more than just the guy who got screwed over by his best friend and had to pick up the pieces caused by Matt's messes.

“Now, are you going to explain that little freak out?”

_Little freak out._ That was a charitable way of putting it. Matt turned his head away from Foggy’s gaze. He could handle it. He was handling it. If he repeated it enough times in his head, he’d be able to reach a point that it was true.

“Frank.” He said coldly. “We need to get out of here. I need to find Frank.”

“_Frank_?”

Matt exhaled wearily, knowing instantly from Foggy’s livid tone that he’d just dropped a bomb that would derail this conversation.

“Foggy-”

“You know what, no, I’m glad you brought him up, because I was thinking we needed to talk about this the next time I saw you, and admittedly, I didn’t think this was how I would next see you, but I also have to admit, that it doesn’t surprise me all that much, considering the kind of life you lead.”

“_Foggy-”_

“Can you explain the image I saw on the front page of the newspaper, that is now living rent-free in my mind? Because, I mean, even disregarding the harem of very hot women you’ve accumulated throughout your life, I very distinctly remember making an accidental pass at you when we first met, and you not taking it all that well, and me feeling very uncomfortable about the experience, but continuing to harbour an if-he-was-into-it-I-would-be-into-it crush on you for the remainder of college, that I never acted on, but did in fact eventually get over, and more importantly, and I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t begin with this, I feel I deserve an explanation for why you were locking lips with the same guy that shot you in the head - almost _killing you_ \- not all that long ago!”

Matt… Matt needed a moment to process that.

“There was a photo of Frank and I on the front page of a newspaper?” He asked, voice smoother and steadier than he felt at that moment.

“That’s what you took out of that?” Foggy shouted, his voice reaching heights of barely contained hysterics. “How could you not know?”

“I’m blind!” Matt stressed, mostly because he didn’t have the emotional energy to through what’d happened since the last time he saw Foggy.

“It’s been on the news non-stop for the past three days! You’re trending on twitter for God’s sake!”

Tried to muster a decent excuse, but he was still processing the information. Had Frank seen it? Surely Frank had seen it. Oh God… _Karen_.

“I’ve been busy.” Matt replied weakly, a cold sweat breaking out over his forehead and along his shoulders.

“Yeah, I sure hope so. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be hearing that my former best friend was still alive after being kidnapped by his murderous doppelganger _from a news headline_, rather than from the mouth of the horse himself.”

Matt thought of the way Foggy searched for him, after Frank had sent a bullet ricocheting off his helmet, and felt a flash of shame. Had he the energy to look for him again? Or had he given up on Matt, who had failed him one too many times. He opened his mouth to respond, guilt gnawing at his chest, but Foggy raised his hand to stop him. “You know what, forget it. This dead-alive-dead again thing with you is becoming a pretty routine cycle at this point. I feel like we’re letting the main topic of this debacle get away from us.”

“Getting out of here?” Matt prompted, hopeful.

“No. Your psychotic boyfriend.”

Matt scowled, “He’s not a psychopath.”

Frank’s lack of empathy extended only towards criminals who made life worse for everyone. And while he could criticize his methods, Matt couldn’t completely blame that sentiment.

Foggy's brow rose. “So, he_ is_ your boyfriend?”

“No – _God_-” Matt cut himself off. They didn’t have time for this. They needed to find a way out.

Matt rested his hands against the ground. He absorbed the slight vibrations that shook the structure, and pushed his awareness outwards, into the walls, the floors. Searched for a fault. A weakness in the structure. An opening. He had fallen into one of the lower killing floors, though it seemed Fisk had added his own personal flare to the place by installing a metal grates in the corner he and Foggy had been trapped in, akin to a prison cell.

“You know there’s a saying that goes around about the reason the Punisher goes on his murder sprees – thirty-three percent for revenge, thirty-three percent for justice, and thirty-three percent just because he goddamn likes it.”

“That’s ninety-nine percent.” He noted, distractedly.

“Yes. Thank you for so graciously pointing that out.” Foggy voiced sarcastically. “The remaining one percent is because he is batshit insane!”

Matt was reminded of Frank, leaping between skyscrapers and kicking through glass to tackle Poindexter to the ground, and he couldn’t help but to smile just scarcely, a minimal flash of teeth,

“Do I need to remind you of the time he chained you to a roof and taped a loaded gun to your hand? Or should I just quote his body count stats in the past year alone?”

He didn’t have to. Matt knew the numbers.

“He has a code.” He pointed out. “No civilians have ever been caught in his crossfire. He doesn’t kill innocents.”

Foggy ploughed on as if he hadn’t heard him at all. “Spoiler alert! It’s over sixty. That we know of. Those are the deaths of _human beings_. People that you once swore to protect. Even without that, just look at you, Matt! I’ve never seen you have a panic attack, and I lived with you for our entire duration of College.”

_Shit._ Right. Matt didn’t need sight to see how bad of a condition he was in. He felt it well enough. And he knew how this looked. Was getting tense and clammy just knowing how Foggy was scanning the bruises across his face and speaking the words that Matt had been keeping safely locked down in some deep, dark corner of his brain.

Matt realised rather abruptly that, to Foggy, Frank’s presence in his life was a dark, intimidating, and foreboding one. To him, Frank Castle was only the Punisher. A brutish, beastly mass, as dogged and determined as he was impartial to human life and good faith. A man that was completely unhinged. A psychotic, uncompromising, nutjob. He remembered all too clearly that this was the man that shot Matt in the head once. Took down three of Hell’s Kitchen’s biggest gangs single-handedly. Chased down and murdered their client. The same man that’d hung a guy from a hook in a meat freezer and left him there to die. Matt keeps forgetting about that, somehow. Compartmentalisation, maybe. Had anyone told him less than a year ago that Frank Castle would be not only a good ally, but a possible partner, he would have thought them insane and dropped them off at the nearest hospital so they could get the treatment they so obviously required.

“_Come on_, Matt. You can cut off Karen and I all you want, but surely even you can see what’s going on-”

Matt growled, pulling away from the tremors of the structure.

“It’s not abuse, Foggy.” He enunciated clearly; voice hard.

Their relationship was… unstable, at times. They’d hurt each other sure, but it’d never been from malevolent intent. Even when Matt had shoved him to a wall and gotten him off, he’d done it from an assumption that it was what Frank had wanted. And afterwards Frank had somehow still been more concerned for Matt’s welfare than his own. Fuck, if anyone was the abusive one, maybe it was Matt.

Matt couldn't do it. Didn't know how to explain that the days he'd spent with Frank had made him feel safer and more alive than the past decade of his life. It was dangerous. He could feel his need to keep Frank close growing inside him, flowering into something wild and choking in his chest.

“I owe him my life.”

“That’s the only reason you’re with him?” There was no malice in the words, but somehow they still managed to rub Matt twelve different ways, all of them wrong.

“What are you trying to say, Foggy?”

“I’m saying that you have an unhealthy attraction to danger, and acting selfless comes real easy when you feel like you have a moral debt to pay. Anyone that’s been around you for as long as Castle knows that well enough to use it against you.”

Matt rejected the idea without so much as a second thought.

“Manipulation isn’t Frank’s style. And even if it was, what could he possibly gain from saving my ass?”

“I don’t know, Matt. Maybe having you out of the picture so he can be on his merry way and continue his little murder sprees, is that a good enough reason for you?”

Matt snorted, shaking his head. “That’s not his aim.”

“Then you tell me. What exactly does he want?”

Matt went silent. That was the big question, wasn’t it?

He felt Foggy’s heart stutter, then start to pound faster, his expression mutating into horror with every passing moment of Matt’s silence.

“You… You don’t even know, do you? You haven’t even thought about it.”

Matt’s lips thinned as he clenched his fists. If only Foggy knew how much he’d thought about it. Thought about it so much that he had eventually hit an impassable crossroad, where he could think no further. Did it really matter, what he wanted? Matt trusted him. Trusted him with my life. With the lives of those he loved. Of what he knew of Frank, after everything he’d already done for him, what ulterior motive could change that?

Foggy observed his lack of response and incorrectly took his deliberation as affirmation. “Fine. Just answer this one question, then. Real simple. Yes or no… Do you honestly think he’s a good man?”

Matt felt himself go cold; brain temporarily paralysed as he tried to piece together a coherent reply. This was a trap. Almost as well set as the one he’d physically fallen into. Say no, and he only proved Foggy’s point. Say yes, and Foggy will think he’s either lost his mind, or Frank had influenced him in some manner.

“I can’t-”

“Yes or no, Matt. Pick one.”

Matt’s jaw tightened. _A good man_. Matt would be hard-pressed to even call Frank a _nice _man. He’d killed countless men. Some that still had plenty potential for change. To think that every criminal deserved death, and that any single individual human had the right to make those decisions was fucking insanity. Certainly, most of the Punisher’s victims didn’t deserve to die. But, for a while now, Matt was beginning to think… Beginning to believe, that maybe some did.

“The world we live in – it doesn’t allow for such simple-”

“_Yes or no_.” Foggy articulated, condescending, like Matt was a child that couldn’t answer a simple question.

“What does it matter if he is or not? You can’t just shove these things down into such binary categories-” Matt was torn – tense, and Foggy took his struggle as an opening.

“You can’t answer because _you know your wrong_ Matt, and you don’t want to ever fucking admit it! He’s dangerous, Matt. And somehow he’s gotten you wrapped around his finger like-”

Matt cut in before Foggy could think about finishing that sentence, anger quick and consuming. “There are people in this city so evil, I can’t in good faith say they deserve a second chance.” The words rushed out of him after that, like water breaking free of a dam, like water flooding into that fucking cab. He was still unable to wash the taste of the Hudson from his mouth. “I can’t put them away, knowing the chaos they’ve caused, the corruption they’ll seed, the lives they _did, have, and will continue to_ ruin! Just let them off scot-free with a short prison sentence and an assumption that they’ll one day try to atone for their sins! I’m fucking tired of it, Foggy! No amount of atonement will bring back Elena Cardenas, or Ben Ulrich, or Elektra, or Stick, or my father, or Frank’s family. A jail cell won’t fix that! Once these people commit the degree of villainy that people like Fisk do, they don’t deserve any fucking atonement! The only thing they deserve is punishment.”

It was only once the room had fallen to complete silence, disrupted only by the dull chatter of the news channel, that Matt realised their argument had risen to shouting match levels.

In the dark quiet of the cage, he heard Foggy’s heartbeat, fast and unstable as his own.

Matt released a shaky exhale, feeling himself sink a little. It was hard. He hadn’t wanted things to go down like this. Though, it wasn’t often he was able to hold a conversation with Foggy without it careening out of his control and into a fiery explosion these days. Foggy was only trying to help; he was sincere in what he said. But Matt had heard his arguments before. Had gone through each conflict, every grievance, point by point in his head. He’d judged Frank through every lens possible, and found determining any definite conclusion of the morality of Frank’s character being good or bad was impossible, and perhaps more importantly, pointless.

When he felt he could say things without screaming, Matt continued.

“You live the justice system. You have to know its flaws as well as I do.”

“So what? We ascribe to the Punisher’s judge, jury, and executioner format? We don’t allow for any complexity or extenuating circumstances that’ve been innately ingrained into humanity? Are you even listening to yourself right now?”

Matt opened his mouth. Closed it. Foggy was right. He wasn’t the law. And he sure as hell wasn’t God. Really, when it came down to it, there was only one thing he knew for sure.

“I want to _help people_, Foggy.”

He had to. That’s how this had all started in the first place, wasn’t it? That was what he kept telling himself, anway. That it had to be more than some innate, inherited need to bloody his fists. That if there was some cosmic force out there, there was a reason for them having put the devil in him. That this all had to mean _something_. His life had to mean something.

“I want to be able to make a difference in this city, and sometimes that doesn’t mean throwing someone in jail.”

Foggy opened his mouth to declare some well-versed rebuttal, but for once, the words failed him. His brow furrowed, expression twisted into a confusion that flitted between concern and anger.

They were interrupted by the crackling of a radio, and Matt twisted his head around, locating the device, sitting outside the metal bars of the cage, just out of reach.

_“We have reports of an ongoing attack at Clinton Church. So far there have been a reported two casualties, but due to the nature of this event, the extent of injury is unknown.” _

This wasn’t a police radio frequency. This was just a local news station. Matt clenched his fists, tight enough that the rope around his knuckles constricted, causing his fingers to pale, and he could feel the bite of his nails digging into his palms.

_Two casualties. _The words bounced around his skull. It was fairly easy for him to extrapolate the very worst from them.

_“The suspects leading the attack are said to be among of two of the FBI’s most wanted, including Frank Castle, also known as the Punisher, and Daredevil, who was reported to have killed several civilians just three weeks ago at the Bulletin.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, after finishing the last chapter and looking at my draft for this one: okay I just need Frank to infiltrate the penthouse instead of Matt. Should be relatively short and not too hard to write. Couple of sentences. Paragraph or two at most.  
Me now: what the fuck have I done.
> 
> Speaking of making things needlessly complicated for myself, I realised today that I’ve already reached 75,000 words on my word doc and hoo boy. How did this happen?
> 
> Also, sorry if Foggy came off as dick. Not my intention. I tried to incorporate some pretty valid points to offset that. Foggy is a wonderful character and I have a lot of appreciation for he and Matt’s relationship, but in my mind and with what he’s seen of them in the past, there’s just no way I can see him supporting what’s going on here. If it makes you feel better, a lot of his anger stems from caring a lot about Matt/being scared for his friend. 
> 
> Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta write a fight scene. That shit H A R D.

**Author's Note:**

> Started making it. 
> 
> Had a breakdown.
> 
> Bone apple tea.


End file.
